Mont St. Michel: An Island Protected by Woolies
Mont St. Michel is pretty incredible. From far away, you see the outer walls, and a medieval Monastery rising up above everything else. We took a shuttle bus to the site, although you can walk. When we were there, the ocean was at a low tide, so the “island” was not surrounded by water, as it is sometimes. When there is no tide, the castle is surrounded by sand, grass, and woolies.
The view from the top is awesome, but there are like a thousand steps that have to be climbed to get there. The Abbey itself is very interesting, and I’d recommend getting a tour guide, because I, being a teenager, was much more appreciative of Mont St. Michel with my dad (a history fanatic) explaining its history. There are a lot of rooms to explore too, so they can seem meaningless without a tour guide. (A note on that though — be sure your guide is licensed if there are more than five of you. We were a group of seven, including my dad, and some tourism official yelled at him for giving an unlicensed tour. The official seemed pretty skeptical when we explained we were all family. In the official’s defense, my dad knows more random historical facts than anyone without a PhD really should.)
There’s a cute village at the bottom of Mont St. Michel where we ate lunch and bought some souvenirs. I especially loved the bakery near the entrance. Inside the walls there’s a main pathway, with the shops and cafes, and then there are alleys (kind of a secret way up that our driver showed us). We climbed to the top through the alleys, and it was more fun to go up stairs squeezing between buildings. There’s actually a hotel on the island, and it would have been cool to stay there and have the whole island to ourselves when all the other tourists left.
A Note on the Woolies at Mont St. Michel
I mentioned before the woolies outside of Mont St. Michel. My parents somehow learned to call sheep this during their two days in Ireland before meeting us in Paris. It probably would’ve been more helpful to learn to ask where to find the “loo”, but saying “wooly” was way more fun. As soon as I learned about the high tide that would soon come in, I, as any compassionate human being would be, was fearful for the woolies’ lives. I thought that they spent their lives battling the tide. Every day, they had to battle the inevitable, running for their lives. A few minutes later, I was informed that the tide doesn’t reach the fields they live in, so they live a peaceful, harm-free life. Whew.
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Our itinerary has links to the sights we saw and to our other blog posts about this trip.
Trip Date: July 2015
Kids’ Ages: Jonny 15 & Emma 13 (plus cousins ages 16 & 14)