It's Sunday morning (well - hmmmm...it's really Tuesday evening, and we're leaving tomorrow, but I need to catch up) on Mont St. Michel. It's very misty - we can't even see the top of the Abbey even from our window, or see the bay below, as we make our way up the rest of the winding paths and stairs to the top - where the Abbey entrance is located. We are fourth and fifth in line...there are trade-offs for being on the Mont so early in the morning, one of which is losing the view because it takes until about noon for all of the mist to burn off. The tide is still low, so we have missed the experience of the Mont surrounded by water - but - being halfway up before we set out is a wonderful advantage. We've left our things in our room, and will check out when we're done following the trail through the Abbey. There is a steep staircase, at the top of which is a set of huge wooden doors. People who work here make their way up (it's about 9 am and the opening time is 10 am), pull out a six-inch skeleton key, open the door and slip inside, closing and locking the door behind them. The staircase is filling with people - divided by tour groups to the left and non-group visitors on the right. During this half hour, a group of college exchange students were waiting at the top, then went to the bottom and heard a lot of information, and we were in the Abbey before they came back up. We were surprised to hear the doors opening at 9:35 - whoo hoo!! It was really nice - we had many of the rooms to ourselves, or with very few other people, and we took as much time as we wanted (along with lots of photos). As we made our way down, got our things, checked out, and were leaving the island, many, many people were just getting there. Magical to have stayed there - despite the whelks.
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| This was how the monks who lived in the Abbey got provisions into the building way up high on the Mont - there was a sleigh-like structure that held what they needed and rode on rails from the lower level (although they didn't have a car down there, I'm sure!) The platform (sleigh) was raised by a huge wheel, powered by humans - convicts, as the monastery was at one time, used as a prison. There are still some monks in residence here - it was a quiet, tranquil place, with a lot of mystery, and spiritual feeling among its many rooms and small chapels. |
Getting out of the parking lot was somewhat tricky - we've noticed that it's assumed that people know how things are done here. We got to the parking exit, inserted our ticket, and the bar would not raise. We put in the credit card, and it came back, along with the ticket. Okay - we waited, tried again, and nothing...and there were cars behind us. Luckily, not too close for us to back out of the line - and we found a friendly person who said since we'd helped him yesterday (ok- not sure we remembered, but that's ok) he'd help us today. He explained that there was a walk-up parking validator that took the credit card and ticket and validated it - which needed to be done before driving to the exit - so we did as he'd explained, and THEN it worked, and we were on the road to Bayeux.
It was cloudy - but rain predicted for tomorrow, so we were hopeful we could get to Omaha Beach today - and we did. We first checked into our hotel - which was ancient-looking outside, and nicely modernized inside, with television that worked, and wifi that worked for the first ten minutes or so. Our room was in the "annex" - might have, at one time, been the stables, it seemed, and again, no elevator (which we knew, but we really wanted a hotel with ambiance - at least from the outside). We put our things in the room and headed out. We made it to Omaha Beach, with a stop at the military museum...it was a humbling experience to actually see where some of the D-Day landings happened. I had come prepared to bring home some sand - just to have some from Normandy Omaha Beach - and we found jars in the gift shop sold for that purpose. At least we knew it was allowed - so we got an official jar, and filled that, too. Being Sunday, everything closed a bit early, so we headed back, had a nice dinner at the hotel restaurant (Hotel Reine Mathilde), and tucked in for the night. I tried to use the towel heater in the bathroom but didn't figure it out right, so had a non-heated towel...but I did heat it later, just to see if it worked. Silly...but I was curious. The tv was showing devastating flash-flooding somewhere in France, so we watched to find out where and it was in the Riviera - Nice and Cannes got 8 inches of rain in an hour - the streets looked like raging rapids. It was sad to see lives lost (we later found out they're having a lot of problems because they keep removing trees and building, and there were also mud slides from the lack of trees to stabilize the land) - and we were thankful that we were in the north rather than in the south of France today.
Our actual photos of Omaha Beach need to be downloaded from the camera - all of the photos I've included in any of these posts were from our phones - which I can easily add to the description. Obviously - this is the jar of sand from Omaha Beach - but the pictures of the beach itself are, as I said earlier, very humbling and we were so glad to have had the opportunity to visit.
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