Back one more time over the Normandy Bridge as we escaped Fécamp. It was raining heavily across most of Normandy and Brittany, but the clouds lightened up as we approached Dinan. Heavy tourist traffic made it a slow go the last couple of kilometers, but our navigation lead us straight to the front door of the Hotel Arvor, right in the center of the old city without a glitch. The last bit was down a cobblestone alley that seemed more like a walking passage.
We dragged all our important baggage into the hotel. The moment we got in the rooms, the girls flipped on their devices looking for WiFi, and a verbal battle broke out over who got to use the laptop first.
Raquel and I headed out to walk around the city, locate a place for dinner, and maybe have a nice cup of tea. I opted for cider. A good deal of our late afternoons are spent foraging for a restaurant that will even consider offering a meal that doesn’t feature meat. Such restaurants are surprisingly rare in France. We often resort to pizza or italian. Lately, the girls have been enjoying crêpes with cheese and maybe egg. And, here we are in Brittany, the center of the universe for crêpes and galettes (a more savory kind of crêpe, usually made with buckwheat).
So, we settled on pizza.
We made it an early night, getting home by 10pm, so we could get an early start to Mont St Michel in the morning.
The tide was low when we arrived and parked just outside Mont St Michel at 10:30am. By 10:50am the bells were ringing, signalling the arrival of the tide. The narrow streets were mobbed with people, despite the moderately heavy rain. We lost 3 of our party in the crowd, so I grabbed Megan went into a souvenir shop with windows looking out to try to glimpse the tide. It wasn’t a wall of water racing in, like I imagined, based on Victor Hugo’s description “like galloping horses”. More like a bath tub filling, but very quickly as we watch islands and sandbars disappear. We focused on one lone seagull, standing on an island, as the water came up around his ankles—do seagulls have ankles? Eventually, the bird was floating right there, and then paddled away.
My phone rang. The rest of the crew were standing in a line in the rain to buy tickets to view the abbey at the top. Not too happy. I decided to keep our tide watching to ourselves (until now) not to exacerbate any situations.
We hustled up the hill to go see the abbey. One regret, and Raquel occasionally thoughtfully reminds me, even now, is that we didn’t get the audio guided tour. So, we wandered through, happy to be out of the rain, and generally took in the interesting architecture, noted that different parts were built at different times in different styles, and wondered what the numbers nine or six, and 8 and an occasional 7 meant as they were carved into the stone patio(?) in front of the abbey church.
Mont St Michel is a beautiful place. But teaming with tourists. Sometimes it was hard to walk down the main street. So, I assume the monks have moved. It is not a peaceful place for quiet introspection.
Mont St Michel was initially settled as a refuge, conveniently set off from the shoreline and accessible by walking during low tides, as long as one was careful about the quicksand.
Benedictine monks took over, but I think only a few remain. From the monks perspective, the place probably started to go downhill when the first wagon load of german tourists arrived in the 11th century, looking for nutella ice cream.
If you look past all the Mère Poulard outlets and cafes and restaurants and souvenir shops, though, it’s possible to see the attraction. Close, quiet and cosy feeling, easily defended. Getting the place built still seems like an amazing achievement.
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