Mont St. Michel

This morning we had breakfast a little later than yesterday and we were joined with another visitor of the B&B, Ken, and his wife. They are from California and really neat people (for my HR peeps reading this blog, Ken created and sold HR metrics companies earlier in his career, he said he’d school me if I wanted to learn), so we enjoyed our conversations before we all left to take on the day.

A place that has been dear in my Mom’s heart for a very long time is Mont St. Michel. It is basically an island with a causeway that is also a huge mountain with a Monastery on top and in winds down to the coast of the land with buildings that have now been transformed into hotels, restaurants, cafes, bars, and souvenir shops. It is really something that is hard to believe exists even when you’re staring right at the mountainous island land mass.

Today also happened to be the second highest and lowest tides of the year; so in addition to that just looking cool there were many religious pilgrims that came to walk out onto the sand an easy ¾ mile distance from the island to pray, chant, and sing. You don’t see that in Raleigh, huh?

So like I said, the Monastery is on the top of this mountain. We took an audio tour since today visitors entered free. I took a load of pictures, all which will hopefully be uploaded by Monday evening UK time, so around lunch for all my readers. On our way down we stopped in a few shops, I picked up some French sea salt for cooking when I get home, but other than that there was a lot of tourist junk. The restaurants looked nice enough but because we decided to eat late, lunch was no longer being served, so we just stopped for sandwiches on our way back to the B&B.

I’d easily go and visit Mont St. Michel again if the opportunity presents itself. It is just an incredible feat of architecture and design that something so complicated could be built and still exists today on such nonconventional piece of land.

We’re having breakfast with the other B&B visitors tomorrow morning at 8:30 a.m. and then we’re all leaving for Paris. I hope that this final car ride it’s excruciatingly painful as the right here was, but at least I’m in the back seat and can try to fall asleep if it starts to get ugly.

If we leave after breakfast as planned, we should have 5-6 hours in Paris before we take the train (EuroStar) back to London where we will arrive just in time for dinner.

I am hoping that George and Sarah will be available for dinner – so if you’re reading this, please call or text so we can figure out a time to get together.

Now, a little game of Gin with my Mom before we head to bed… We’ve been playing before bed each nice in France and while I lead the first night, she’s seriously whipping me now. Wish me luck!