Kodiak Haakansons: Mont Saint Michel

Sunday, November 28th- We were up and out of our house in Nantes by 9 to go find breakfast. We realized early on that it was Sunday and had twenty minutes of stress as we looked for gas and food, but eventually all was resolved and we headed north towards Mont Saint Michelle. As we drove on the boring highway we decided that since we had a short-ish drive (2 hours) we should take the backroads and look for monkey puzzles and admire the little French towns that have been spared a freeway cutting through their centers. The first turn that Sven took lead us through some amazing rural little towns (always with jaw-dropping churches at their centers) where we saw a few monkey puzzle trees and were able to walk around a bit. As we drove into the area where Mont Saint Michelle was (we stayed in the neighboring town of Avranches) Sven found our 20th monkey puzzle of the entire trip, winning our bet with my mom finally! Woo-hoo!

We got ourselves checked into our strange hotel in Avranches with a weird semi-circular bathroom that the kids called the spaceship (“I’m going to Mars… see you soon!”) and we immediately headed out towards Mont Saint Michel which is probably the 2nd most recognizable silhouette in France after the Eiffel Tower.

Mont Saint Michel initially was just a little 1km island a low-tides walk from the coast when the bishop of Avranches was reportedly commanded by the warrior Archangel Michel to build a church in that spot. The bishop ignored the order and was later to build a church there only when Michel burned a hole in his skull with his finger. This was 708 AD. An Italian architect, William de Volpiano, designed the Romanesque church of the abbey in the 11th century, daringly placing the transept crossing at the top of the mount. Many underground crypts and chapels had to be built to compensate for this weight. These formed the basis for the supportive (insanely huge and maze-like) upward structure that can be seen today.

Monks inhabited this island for more than 1000 years but the benedictine order left in 2001 as they learned that the island did not exactly lend itself to a life of quiet conemplation. This place is a tourist madhouse.

Gradually over time the church became a major pilgrimage site and quite a few pilgrims were killed crossing the sandy spit. Eventually a causeway was built connecting the island to the mainland and streets were built adding infrastructure to the little island. We were awestruck by the looming silhouette of the church, by the winding (incredible touristy) streets. As we were surrounded by two busloads of Japanese tourists we commented about how happy we were to be here in the off-season (even it was 30 degrees) as the streets must be just packed in the summer months.

We were struck by quite a few things with this little island: Eilidh counted 808 steps! The stained glass windows filling the church and all of its massive buildings were complex, restrained and tastefully done. In the midst of the tourist, monks and nuns bustled about from building to building, smiling and busy. The view from the various structures was stunning- nothing but sea and the distant fields. We looked at a model of how the crowning steeple sculpture of St Michael sculpture was installed with the aide of an MI8 helicopter.

We enjoyed immensely our afternoon on the mount (and our celebratory return nutella crepe) and only wished we had more time and maybe another 10 degrees....