Mont Saint Michel

We took a quick weekend trip to Mont Saint Michel on the coast of Normandy. It has been an abbey since the 900s. After the French Revolution, religion was "out", and Mont Saint Michel was a prison for many years. It was built on a granite island out in the middle of the bay. They have *really* strong tides here, the whole bay is a muddy mucky mess at low tide, and then surges in as the tide rises. It is low tide for some of my pictures, and high tide at others.

In the 1860s they built a causeway out to the island so you can reach it without going through the mud. The causeway caused a lot of the bay to silt up, they have just broken ground on a project to build a bridge out to the island, and get rid of the causeway. The project looks rather involved (finishing in 2012) , I'm glad we got to see le Mont before construction cranes descended on it.

The island itself is....well.... a tourist trap. A very nice one, but definitely a tourist trap. Packs of tour buses descend on the place during the day. Sunday was especially packed because it was the first Sunday of the month, and entrance to the abbey was free. Numerous museums and monuments are free (and crowded) on the first Sunday of the month in France.

The abbey was fairly interesting. You could see the numbers on the stones in the terrace, stone masons got paid by the number of stones. After the floor was laid, stone mason #8 would get paid based on the number of stones with '8' in them in the floor. Some interesting architecture, some of the gothic arches made for fun photos. When it was used as a prison, they installed a huge human hamster wheel. The prisoner power from the wheel was used to drag supplies up a steep slope into the abbey.

We were staying overnight, which ended up being a really good thing. It meant that we had the place to ourselves after the day trippers left. It was magical at night and in the morning. We walked along the fortified wall around the island, and walked out on the causeway a bit so we could see the abbey lit up.

Mont Saint Michel pics are at:
http://picasaweb.google.com/suzypics2/MontStMichel