Mont St. Michel

Our final stop on our very own Tour de France was a Mt. St. Michel.  Really a amazing place!!  Felt like we were visiting a fairy tale, or something out of a movie.  Hard to believe a place like this exists naturally.  Seeing it now its impressive, had to be unbelievable 1,500 years ago.

Tons of cool little shops and
restaurants around the outside
of the Abbey

100 or so years ago when the tide came in it would completly circle the Mont and make it an island, but now has been engineered to always have a road accessable in and out.  Ironically they have recently secured 164 million Euros to restore it to its previous glory and let flood daily.  Supposedly it has the greatest variation between high and low tide of anywhere in Europe, something close to 50 feet!!

The Mont acted as a military stronghold for many years and then in 708 the Archangel Michael appeared to the Bishop St. Aubert and instructed him to build an abbey on the island.  Aubert ignored the requests until Michael burned a hole in the Bishop's head to spring him into action.  Here is a statue depicting that moment.

The whole place was pretty low key, which makes sense as it was built by monks, but impressive none the less purely in scale and complexity of construction.

The monks moved away some time around the French Revolution in appx. 1800 but were lured back in 1966. Soon enough though, they got feed up with all the tourists and moved away again in 2001.

Its funny a couple weeks ago I was watching Blazing Saddles, and got to the scene where the two rail workers get stuck in quicksand.  I got to thinking that in my life I had always heard about quicksand but never seen it, and wasn't sure it was anything more than an urban legend.  Then almost on queue .....

I actually saw a girl walking around later with mud up to her knees.  I guess it really does exist.