Monday. We finally visited Mont St Michel, which was one of the main highlights of our travel plan (along with Claude Monet's garden). Because this region has the highest tides in Europe, at high tide Mont St Michel is an island, and is only reachable by bridge. (At the highest tides, at the equinox, even the bridge is flooded and Mont St Michel is closed.)
Our visit started just after high tide.
The abbey is at the peak of the island, and the villiage is below. There are only a dozen or so permanent residents of the village, and the main street (basically the only street of the village) is full of tourist shops and restaurants.
We did a 2 hour walking tour of the village before our visit to the abbey. Here is our guide telling us about Joan of Arc. Apparently she talked to St Michel in her visions before her army defeated the English (at 15 years old).
View of the abbey from the village.
Sonya climbing u the many many steps to the abbey.
Inside the church, at the peak of Mont St Michel.
Winding our way back down.
Aprés our visit, looking back up to the abbey.
A dramatic view back up Mont St Michel.
Leaving Mont St Michel, the tide is still receding and you can theoretically walk all the way to the "island". However there are apparently patches of quicksand that shift around with the tides!
Mont St Michel with the local sheep in the foreground. Apparently they have a unique taste due to the fact that they feed on wheat that is salted with the local tides. (Also on hot days the wheat ferments in their stomaches and they stroll around drunk!) We haven't yet tasted the local "agneau".
On our way home we stopped for a quick visit to Dol-de-Bretagne, a cute little town with lots of "half timber homes" (timber frame willed in with brick or mortar).
These homes are hundreds of years old and visibly settling. Here is Sonya propping up one of the old homes.
Tuesday we planned an easy day, with a stroll around St Malo. (We've averaged about 20,000 steps per day so far, or about 16 km walking. We ended up doing about the same on this so-called easy day.)
It was a windy day, and we got some rain late in the afternoon on our way home.
We saw an exhibition of photos of Lee Millar, a war correspondant during the liberation of St Malo in August 1944.
View from the ramparts of the old town.
After the rain, a rainbow!
Sonya took this shot of a rock just off the St Malo beach. She's going to tell everyone it's a distant shot of Mont St Michel :-P
Wednesday, a visit to the old town of Dinan (in the rain!). We were hoping to take a boat cruise here (Dinan is up the Rance River (St Malo is at the mouth of the river)) but they don't run in October, so we drove :-( This is a view of the town from one of the towers of the local chateau.
Sonya in the rain, reading about Dinan.
Sonya in the rain, after a visit to the local basilica.
Another "half timber house".
A shot of the basilica from the church garden.
Today (Thursday) the weather is supposed to improve (it looks sunny out right now anyways) so we are doing a day trip to Erquy (the scallop capitol of France and the home village of Asterix the Gaul) and a short hike along that section of the GR 34 trail.
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