Today we are going on an un-guided tour to Mont St. Michel with a few Cruise Critic members. We all meet at the appointed time and head outside to hop into our 6 passenger vans and get underway. We are about 1/2 an hour late, but we’ve got until 11PM tonight, so we aren’t concerned about the delay. It is a 2 hour ride to Mont St. Michel, and we spend the time chatting with our fellow passengers.
The tour group has given us fantastic instructions and explanations about Mont St. Michel, so we are well prepared for our visit. We also can buy tickets from our driver for the Abbey – which allow us to skip the line when we arrive at the entrance. Once out of the van, our driver walks us to the shuttles to get to the “island” and tells us where she will meet us at 4:00pm. We’ve got oodles of time and are raring to go.
We all hop the next shuttle and make our way over the 3Km causeway to Mont St. Michel. The island is thought to have been inhabited since 708 when Aubert, Bishop of Avranches, had a sanctuary built on top of the island in honor of the Archangel Michael. The sanctuary and island soon became a pilgrimage site, and in the 10th century, the Benedictines settled in the abbey and the village began to grow around the base of the island.
The island is surrounded by a tidal basin that at low tide (which is what we have now) is a vast plain of mudflats. People are out there walking around, trekking through the flats and sitting around in huge circles (why? we have no idea, but there are tons of people out there!).
We follow the tour company’s instructions once off the shuttle and cross the street to avoid all the crowds at the shuttle stop. Here we can get better pictures of the Mont without getting stuck in the crowds.
Finally, we enter the town. We are using a hybrid tour system, part tour company information, part Rick Steve’s. The tour company instructs us to avoid the main entrance, which takes you up a narrow, crowded main street with over 300 steps, and instead take the Fanils entrance on the left, with the big Gendarmerie sign above the gate. This route takes you up the west side of the island, on a more gently sloping cobblestone lane. It is said to be easier and less tiring since you don’t have to fight the crowds going up and down on the main street.
This little secret is worth its weight in gold. The tour cost wasn’t all that much, but the instructions they give and the skip the line ticket make it totally worthwhile! We wander up the lane, stopping every so often to snap pictures of the façade of the abbey and the view looking off into the mudflats of the bay. It’s stunning up here.
After about 15 minutes, we reach the top of the town, and the entrance to the abbey. Using our skip the line tickets, we walk up to the lady who is checking bags (I’ve already had to switch out our gear into the Azamara bag we brought because the Abbey doesn’t allow “rucksacks” and while my backpack isn’t exactly a rucksack, it’s pretty big and our tour driver has said it might be too big), have a pigeon English/French discussion about where to go, through a gap between her table and a big column, take a brochure and get out tickets scanned. Works pretty smoothly, even with the language barrier.
We were hoping to be able to take an English tour, but they only offer them twice a day, and neither time works. So, once in the Abbey, we switch to Rick Steve’s and do our own walking tour. First stop is the West Terrace facing the abbey church. Here we get more spectacular views of the bay and the receding waters, plus the impressive facade of the church itself (in all its back lit glory).
We enter the church, but services are still going on. We had hoped they would be over, but the Sunday mass lasts a long time. We sit and listen for a while, watching the blessing of the children, with the nuns walking through the crowds collecting the children. After a while we end up leaving and meandering through the cloister, trying to wait out the service.
The cloister is a beautiful area, peaceful and if you can ignore all the crowds, you can definitely visualize the monks here, reading and meditating.
We try to go back into the church, hoping the mass is over, but they are just finishing with communion, and we’re not going to wait around much longer, so I surreptitiously snap a picture of the Archangel Michael on one of the pillars and the huge Romanesque round arches,
and we head out through the Cloisters and on into the Refectory.
No comments:
Post a Comment