St. Mike's Place

Today started last night at 10:45 pm. Stephanie caught the overnight train to Paris, on which I slept only about 30-45 minutes. We arrived in Paris, sat around for an hour and a half, and boarded a train for Rennes. We arrived late in Rennes, and missed our bus to Pontorson, then we spoke to the driver of the next bus who told us we couldn’t take his bus. When I tried to ask him why, he said he was going to Mont St. Michel, not Pontorson. I told him that’s where we wanted to go anyway, so it ended up working out fine.

We, however, were slowly going insane.

 So finally we got to Mont St. Michel. And let me tell you, when they say Mont they’re not kidding. We climbed up and down that mountain three times today, I’m guessing I climbed upwards of a thousand steps over the course of six hours. Anyway, Mont St. Michel used to be an island, but in the 1870s a dyke was built to connect it to the mainland. This caused the bay to fill with silt from the local river, and now the island sits in the middle of a mud flat.

That's Normandy in the background, not England.

 The river separates Brittany from Normandy, and while it used to flow on the opposite side of Mont St. Michel, today the abbey lays on the Norman side. A dam is being built on the river currently to attempt to fix the silt problem and allow the tides (which still cause major havoc) to flow freely. The tides are famous for leaving a salt flat at low tide, and then rising suddenly (at 2ft. per second) to strand careless visitors.

To your left, Normandy. To your right, Brittany.

 Since the 1000s, Mont St. Michel, with its one-street village, has been a major tourist trap. In a medieval version of “If you build it, they will come,” the island quickly became a major pilgrimage site. The narrow street which winds up the mountain was lined with people selling “souvenir” religious relics and fast food. So, little has changed in the last millennium. Mont St. Michel is famous actually for its omelets, which were a fast and easy food for medieval pilgrims. There is a restaurant on the island which sells an omelet made from a 600 year old family recipe, and they only cost 30€.

And the crowds are pretty much the same as a thousand years ago, too.

 The abbey complex itself is part church, part castle, part prison, and part sky-rise hotel. The bottom floor was made available to house the peasant-pilgrims, the second floor was given to VIP guests (kings and queens often visited here as well), and the top floor was reserved for the clergy. Above that were the crypts and the abbey itself.

Deluxe apartments in the sky?

 We started up at the top, at the abbey, which is another one of those weird half-Romanesque, half gothic churches. This time it’s because one of the crypts which supported the church collapsed, bringing down the apse-end of the church (kind of punny, but true). So the crypt was rebuilt and the apse was rebuilt, both in the gothic style.

Look closely. Round arch at left, pointy ones at right.

We headed out into the cloisters, which were thronged with tourists, even this late in the travel season. We went into the “cafeteria” (no, I can’t remember the name of this room), where the monks ate in total silence while one monk read monotone from the bible. Luckily, there was a Japanese tour group with a guide who decided to demonstrate how to do it in what sounded like perfect Latin.

Yep, they knew how to eat in style.

 We went down through the crypts, which were pretty interesting. I love big rooms with pillars and vaults for some reason. I’ll just call it a fetish.

Is this phallic?

 After a while we came to the hospital/hostel/ossuary part of the abbey complex. But what is left there today is from the days that the island was used as a hospital. During the French Revolution, revolutionary forces railed against the Catholic Church. The 300 or so monks on the island became prisoners on the island and were forced to work. They hauled 2,000lb loads of supplies up the mountainside via a hamster-wheel like crane.

Ahh, the life of the hamster...

 Finally, the knight’s hall marked the end of the tour. It was another big room with lots of pillars and vaults. After that, we spent a couple of hours killing time by eating and shopping and walking around in circles (yes, up and down the hill several times).

Is this phallic?

 After what seemed like an eternity, darkness fell and the place was lit up beautifully. We walked around and snapped the last of our photos before calling it a night. Luckily, in France, there’s never anything to do after 8 o’clock at night anyway. So we made the mile-ish walk back to our hotel and now Stephanie and I are watching Underworld in français, which is a little weird. I’ve still got a lot I want to do tonight on the internet, so I’ll bid adieu to all of you so I can finally get some sleep.

And... that's all folks.