Mont St. Michel

We had the pleasure of spending the night on one of the world's most famous islands - Mont St. Michel. Situated on the border between Normandy and Brittany, Mont St. Michel is one of the wonders of the Middle Ages. It is both an abbey and a fortress, first settled by religious hermits in the 6th century. In the 8th Century Saint Aubert dreamt that the archangel Michael commanded Aubert to build a church in his honor on the rock. After the third such dream, Aubert finally conceded, and a crude church was built, and this tiny island then became a pilgrimage site.

In 966, the first Benedictine monks appeared on the island and built the current abbey in the 11th and 12th centuries. Up to 60 monks at any given time welcomed pilgrims, both rich and poor. In the late 14th to 15th centuries, the rock was was reinforced due to the Hundred Years' War (and never taken, a point of pride for the French). During the French Revolution, the Abbey became a prison from 1793 to 1863, filled with hundreds of priests who refused to renounce their faith, and political prisoners. It was not until 1969 that Benedictine monks returned to the mount. In 2001, they were replaced by The Monastic Fraternities of Jerusalem. We saw no nuns or monks in our visit, but they do welcome pilgrims (which we were not).

To get to the island you park on the mainland, then take a shuttle or walk the 50 minutes across the causeway. After an involved hunt for our designated parking lot, we elected to take the shuttle and our overnight bags. After checking into our hotel, in the single main street on the island, we sweated our way through the tourist gauntlet and up and up the stairs to the entrance of the abbey, where we marveled at this engineering feat, perched in the sky.

Due to limited space, it is built up, not out. On top is the impressive church, and beneath are crypts, a cloister, a rectory, and various receiving rooms and study rooms. The cloister, which usually has no windows (the better for monks to remove themselves from the outside world) now sports a window on the bay, in which the modern tourist can watch the tides go in and out. I was particularly impressed with the crypt of big pillars (Gros Piliers), which was constructed in 1446 after the old crypt collapsed. The monks had no intention that a second crypt fail, hence the enormous crowd of unusually thick pillars.

According to our guidebooks, lodging on the island is overpriced and spartan. However, Rick Steves recommended Du Gueslcin, the last family-owned lodging on the island. We found our floral wallpapered room, with a view of the bay, perfectly adequate, very economical, and the family extremely friendly. Their hotel is also a bar and restaurant, and we had both breakfast and dinner there. Having dined very well in Paris and Rouen, we would describe our meals at the hotel as adequate, but the service and views compensated for any culinary blandness.