France, Mont St Michel

Well, we certainly weren't disappointed. The advice had been to get there early as it is apparently the 2nd most visited tourist attraction in France, and so looking at 50k drive we left about 9am. The forecast had been for a fine day of 27 degrees but when we left it was a very foggy 19. It is quite well organised - you arrive at a large car park with visitors centre and can walk the 2.5k's to the Mont or take a bus type thing or horse and cart. We walked. All the better to take some absolutely stunning photos. We arrived at low tide so got the full vista of the Mont surrounded by sand. And it really is everything I expected it to be. Once you get there it is quite small, all narrow winding cobbled streets leading to a very steep straight up hill walk to the abbey which has had pride of place at the top of the rock since about the 12th century. There is some outstanding art work in quirky places throughout the abbey - I particularly liked the big gold dragons foot gripping the top of one of the battlements, and the large eagle trapped in a stone cloister. There is not much village to speak of, what was there is now a conglomerate of very touristy shops and some food places. Roge spied a lovely looking restaurant on our way in and very fortuitously booked us a table for later. Who would have thought it would get so crazy busy?? It was a good thing we were ready to leave when the crowds were at there worst. The fog had cleared and it had got quite hot by the time we had to walk back to the car - we got a whole different set of pic's on the return trip.Read more