France 2025 - Day 5

 Day five we transitioned from WW II battlefields to other stuff. Truth be told, we were all kind of tired of seeing WW II stuff so we were ready for the change. On this day we went to Mont St Michel.

We started by eating breakfast made up of bread, cheese, sausage and pate. We then had a 90 minute drive to the parking area at Mont St Michel. Since we were spending the night on the island, we had to take our backpacks so Dad and I took the bus, but Owyn wanted to walk.

Dad and I with the monastery behind us. It was very windy.

The tide was out when we arrived and it was quite windy but not cold.

This tiny island gets tens of thousands of visitors every single day and has one way to the island and one street on the island, though there are several side streets that you can wind around in.

This was SOOOOO cool to see.

All of this is underwater at high tide, which we did get to see later. You can see the gate left of picture.

The entrance gate. Dad was going in to find the office for the hotel. There are many hotels on the island but they all share the same front office. I waited here for Owyn to catch up.

The start of The Street.

This crowd is much smaller than later in the day.

Some of the curtain wall behind this house and garden. The walls run all the way around the island and you can walk most of them.

There are lawns and gardens built into the village all over the place, even though real estate is very limited.

We dropped out bags at the hotels office and started up the hill for our scheduled tour of the monastery. We had pre-bought our tickets but there were not really any lines.

Heading up to the entrance to the monastery.

This is inside the monastery, heading up to the parts that everyone wants to see.

Cool bridge at the top of the two towers.

Nearing the top of the long stair case.

Looking back down the entrance from the first courtyard.

That is the bridge to the island.

That area down there is the front gate. This was a long climb up.

A very cool model.

This is what the island looks like today.

This wheel was attached to sledges that were used to pull up supplies when this was a prison during the French Revolution.

The slide for the sledges to run up and down.

A sledge.

Looking through the wheel at the slide.

A large, fat French pigeon.

Version one of the Abbey.

Version two of the Abbey.

Still version 2.

Version 3 of the Abbey. Not it's starting to look like what we see today.

The final version.

You can see where there were more walls here before.

A gun battery covering the entrance channel.

The tide is very far out.

Looking down the wall back towards the mainland.

The interior of a tower.

Looking down at the gate from the wall walk.

The exterior of our hotel. We are in that top room with the single small window.

The interior of our room. Unfortunately they gave us a room with only two beds so Owyn slept on the floor/half in the wardrobe. It seemed really uncomfortable but he made his choices.

We had a nice dinner. By that time about the only people left on the island were those spending the night. At both lunch and dinner we had some nice cider. At lunch we got one that came in a pitcher. If you are ever in Normandy and they offer a pitcher of cider, that's what you want to buy. 

Owyn and I went out to look around, separately, but Dad stayed in the room. After that we crashed for the night.