MONT ST. MICHEL AND CHARTRES CATHEDRAL

Mont. St. Michel This is one of the best touristic sites in France. It is a site of pilgrimage, a site for tourists, and for about 30 people, home. There is a town at the bottom and a monastery at the top.

When you approach the place, it appears to float above the horizon and then suddenly, it’s only floating in the water. We arrived about 20 minutes before high tide, at which time the water actually comes in to the bottom of the town and the parking areas are inundated. In another hour or two, cars can aagain park in the area, but as we arrived, the bus could only turn around and leave after letting us off. Because of the silting of the estuary, it’s been decided that the levee road, or berm or whatever it’s called, will be removed, as will the parking areas, I suppose.

I think they must be planning on building a bridge there. Additionally, the river is dammed upstream for the sole purpose of managing the way the water flows and the silt collects, no saving water, no generating electricity. Once we got there we had another day of having a tour with our wonderful guide Benedict. She took us to the small church that is for the village, and it’s best described as cute, because everything in the town is tiny because of lack of space. Then we started our climb up the hill. Zoe made it quite far up, but the last part of the trip up to the monastery, was way too steep. I think it was about 70-80 steep steps, all together. I think that with enough time, she might have made it, but once you get into the top part, you kind of have to move along. It’s very plain, slightly colored glass in some places, but no real “pictures” in glass. Most of what you see up there is the refectory and the eating hall where the king came from time to time.

One of the more interesting things is a human wheel (sort of like a hamster wheel) that several men would walk in to make it turn and provide the power to haul the stones up the side of the mountain on a large sledge. (Benedict is standing in front of the sledge).

The visit to the Mont is, in a way, less about aquiring information, though that’s interesting, and more about just absorbing the place. Of course when you go with a tour group, it’s hard to absorb much of the atmosphere, except the atmosphere of tourist. I had remembered it as being a hard walk, but I didn’t think it was this time. Even those stairs didn’t kill me as they usually would, and I have no idea why. Here are four pictures from a little diorama where you can see how Mont St. Michel has grown over the centuries since the Archangel Michael told Obert to build a church at the top of the hill.

After we left Mt. St. Michel we took an unplanned side trip to a German soldiers memorial from WWII. It is nicely maintained, but not supported by their government as the American cemeteries are. And it’s a mausoleum rather than a cemetery. I did find a Graf there, but he wasn’t from Baden. This cemetery also had families and German civilians as well.

Our final stop of the day was a charming little city called Cancale. We got lost on the way because roads were flooded from the very high tide, and then we had a chance to take pictures from above.

We went to Cancale to have raw oysters. I opted out.

Tuesday we’re basically returning to Paris, but we had an included tour of Chartres cathedral, which turned out to be a mess. First of all, we had to change the schedule and take our tour at noon instead of 1:30 or 2, because there was a funeral scheduled at 2. But being French, the guy who rented the headphones wasn’t there, and we had the most soft-spoken tour guide I’ve ever heard, including the fact that she was the least successful English speaker we’ve had. And if that weren’t enough, the organist came in and started practicing for the upcoming funeral, and whatever we might have heard was over. But wait, there’s more. The church is undergoing a renovation and the story of the whole history of the world which is in carvings at the front of the church, is totally covered up. They have a rather impressing trompe de l’oiel imitation behind the altar, (modern, on plywood, to hide the restoration work) but it was sad to miss seeing the carvings.

The tympanum over the door outside the church has a bunch of musicians on it, but I'm not sure you can see them too well in this picture.

The organ sounded wonderful, though, but we left the church in the middle of the tour and had a good lunch across from the church at a charming restaurant, which will probably be our last nice meal in France.

Our bus driver is a magician. He parked this giant bus in a parking place that is only about 5 feet bigger than the bus. He has done some really amazing feats with a bus that was never meant to navigate through a little town like this. He's from the Czech Republic and the bus he's using is new on this trip. These little towns have such tight corners and navigation hazards and I think this one is something like 20 meters long.

Yikes. Sometimes we have to jockey back and forth around corners. Today he did the really impressive feat of parallel parking this behemoth in a space that was only 5 feet longer than the bus. He's standing in all the extra space on this picture