Mont Saint Michel

After a delicious breakfast and one of the best croissants we've had so far, we drove the 15 minutes to Mont Saint Michel. Our Tom Tom Nav system came up with probably the most convoluted way to get there going through the middle of nowhere (though very very pretty) farm land, but alas we did finally make it to the gorgeous island.

Apparently back in the day the parking lot would actually get flooded during high tides, but they've moved it further back now so it's no longer a risk. You take a free shuttle bus then to get to the island. There's a causeway built to get there, but it's in the process of being replaced by a bridge since the causeway is causing (ha!) too much sediment to be built up. The bridge is supposed to be done in something like 2015 so we still used the causeway for this trip.

Mont Saint Michel has an interesting history dating back to the 700's. It was built because a bishop had visions that Saint Michael wanted him to build a church on a rocky island. The island is surrounded by stores and shops on the lower level, with an abbey at the top. The tour of the abbey was really interesting and I'd consider it well worth a visit if you have the time in France.

The tides around the bay are also supposed to be spectacular in how fast and high they rise, but unfortunately due to other scheduling conflicts we could only go when the tide wasn't high enough to actually surround the island. But it was still really cool and well worth going even if the tides aren't going on.

We ate lunch at a restaurant on the island, and I got one of the famous omelets that are a tradition there since they're fast to make so that pilgrims could make it back to the mainland before the tides came in. Now of course it still took a good while until the food came so I suppose we would have drowned if it were the olden days, but it was a really good and incredibly fluffy omelet. You can take walks along the mudflats surrounding the island, but considering it was really really cold and windy that didn't seem like fun. Also there's quicksand so if you did do that, it's best to take a guided tour to avoid those areas and be aware of the tides since they do come in so incredibly fast. It sprinkled on us occasionally but somehow we missed the brunt of the rain, though we could always see it off in the horizon. We did have to move inside while eating though since it starting dropping some big heavy drops in the middle of lunch.

Afterwards we drove along the coastline towards Saint Malo. There's a really scenic route specifically setup for this, and with our trusty Rick Steves France book, were able to get our nav system to cooperate in finding it. Along the way we passed people land sailing on the empty coastline and actually tried to see if we could join in (as it was a business) but alas you needed reservations. It was still really cool to see it in action. We also passed by a village where the ships were all stuck in the sea floor because it was low tide, which was a really interesting sight.

It also randomly started hailing on us for about 3 minutes in the middle of the drive, and then was sunny again. From reading the news over the last 6 months I knew the Brittany region had some crazy weather, and this just confirmed it. 

Finally we made it to Saint Malo which is a really interesting city surrounded by gigantic walls to protect it from invaders. You can actually climb up to the top of them and walk around. We finished the evening by eating some crepes (which the area is known for) as the sunset fell. Interestingly most of the city was destroyed in WWII due to bombing.

After a very full day of sightseeing we drove 2 hours to Bayeux to spend the night in preparation of seeing the D-Day beaches the next day. After a bit of confusion of how to park at the Hotel Churchill (named of course after Winston Churchill, as they were the first major city liberated after D-Day) we could finally get some rest.