We continue our 2018 trend of visiting UNESCO World Heritage Sites, and what a site Mont St. Michel is! The Bay has the highest tidal range in Europe (like the Bay of Fundy in Canada) so like a good Coastie I carefully consulted the tide tables so we could see the island at high tide. (When it's low tide, the island is just surrounded by mud and you'd never believe the tide can come in so far.)
As we were dragging the kids out of their nice warm beds..I was repeating what Mark would say at the beach, "Time & tide wait for no man". Teenagers are tough to convince, but we did manage to leave while it was still dark. We passed an old windmill as we were close...you can see its almost sunrise!
The car parking is on the other side of a long causeway that was only recently built. Our goal of the Mont is what you see rising out of the clouds behind us in this picture.
This gives you an idea of how far we had to walk, it was cold, there was a layer of frost on the causeway boards..but what a destination! The girls said it looked like something out of a Disney movie that we were walking toward...like the castle in Frozen...
Charlie kept trying to flag down the shuttle bus driver by sticking up his thumb the guy would give him a thumbs up and honk, but he kept driving..we all had a good laugh!
Getting closer...
The sun is peeking through..
All the trucks you see are bringing in supplies for the hotels and restaurants on the island. They can get as far as that lot, then they have to unload everything and hike it up in little wheelbarrows. Impressive organization to keep the cupboards stocked here!
Arrival...
Kelly really liked the unicorn sign on this place!
The streets were super narrow and winding, the kids said it was like being in Diagon Alley in Harry Potter. What most most incredible to me is that it was all real...not a theme park...
A lower chapel...before we climbed, up, up, up to the steps of the Abbey.
Clouds were surrounding the Abbey as we continued to climb. The Abbey is supposed to be incredible inside, however, it was cold and very early and it wasn't open yet. We decided that we had achieved our goal and we should escape before the crowds rolled in and our 8 year old melted down.
"You gotta know when to fold em'", right?
Kelly took this picture with my phone right before she dropped the phone and it barely missed falling into a hole and going out to sea...lucky for her!
A view of someone's champagne from the night before, this is one of the hotel rooms right on the island, it is supposed to be cool to stay over for the night because once the crowds leave you have the entire place to yourself. We got there so early we did have the place to ourselves, other than the few workers who were bringing in supplies to the hotels.
Katie & Greg doing there goofy photos...
Look how much more you can see now that the sun has come up...still freezing though, so we cheated and hopped the shuttle bus back to our car. You can also see how much the tide has gone out since the time we arrived-probably about an hour before!
Later in the day we sampled the local cider and I was super excited because it came in this mug, just like the picture I had seen in one of the guide books. It was good cider...but not quite the Savannah Dry I have been searching for since we left South Africa!
The town our Air BnB was in was called Roz de Couesnon, and there was a scenic view point that showed the whole area. This sign was at the top, I thought it was cool that I found an original "Coast Guard Station"...see below.
The Coast Guard building they are talking about is the brick thing to the right in this picture.
We were sad to head for home the next day and had plans to stop in Rouen, but instead detoured to a beach town near the Black Cow Cliffs (called Falaise des Vaches Noires) we followed the highway sign that showed a fossil and a sea shell. The sea shells were what lured me in but the big surprise was finding this bike rental place next to a dinosaur museum. They rented every kind of bike rig you could imagine.
We decide on the triple bike...Kelly starts out as driver...
Charlie picked out this green machine type bike..
Greg replaces Kelly as the driver...they found their groove eventually but it was really hard-heavy bike!
Next time we thought we would try the giant red octopus looking bike..we sat on it to test it, we needed two more people and we could have done it, it was super heavy!
I did get to collect some sea shells and Charlie thinks he found some fossils. Kelly and Greg enjoyed a nice long walk and talk on the beach.
We headed for home, feeling pretty lucky to have had such a great trip, we feel very fortunate to have seen such amazing places...I think the kids will never forget the early morning walk to Mont St. Michel!
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