Le Mont Saint Michel

We went to le Mont Saint Michel and it was wonderful.  We spent two days there and have so many pictures I want to share that I am going to divide it into two posts.  This one will be about our journey there and the tiny city of Mont Saint Michel, which has about 40 full time residents.

The first Christian building was built there after the Archangel Michael appeared, in 708, to St Aubert, the bishop of a town across the bay called, Avranches.  We got a ride to Avranches from our WWOOF hostess, Valerie.

This is a view le Mont from the beautiful garden in downtown Avranches.

 We hitchhiked the 24 km from Aranches to le Mont.  It was quite easy and we got a ride all the way to the reserved parking because our driver was a waiter in the city.

The city is free to enter and it is an attraction in it's own right.  Le Mont used to be an island at the outlet of a river but they built a car road to it at some point, which has caused the silt to build up in the bay making very exciting tides.  The shallow water tide rip (I think that's accurate) is hard to imagine.  It makes a loud roaring noising and it moved out from the shore at the famous "speed of a galloping horse," as Victor Hugo described it.  As it got into deeper water, it created a large patch of sine wave ripples as it continued to move laterally.

Practical Advice
- plan to stay long enough to see high tide and the hour or so afterwards.  It is also good to see the low tide for contrast.  We stayed over night to do this.
- it is 9 euro to get in to the monastery, which is worth the money
- the four museums in town are NOT worth the money  (thankfully we only paid for one, but it was a waste)