Tuesday, September 17, 2024 – Mont Saint-Michel.

I booked an all day tour of Mount Saint Michel through Normandy Sightseeing Tours.

This is Anne-Sophie the van driver and tour guide for today’s excursion.

The trip started at 8:30 AM in Bayeux. There were seven people in the tour group. Anne-Sophie took backroads through the French countryside on our almost two hour drive to the parking lot at Mont Saint-Michel.

We waited in line for 15 minutes to catch a shuttle bus that takes you from the parking lot to the causeway that goes across the bay to the Mount.

This is the causeway across the bay. In this bay the ocean rises as much as 50 feet between low and high tide.

Mount Saint-Michel is the most visited tourist attraction outside Paris. Over three million people visit every year. It is a UNESCO world heritage site.

Legend has it that in 708 the archangel Michael visited Archbishop Aubert in a dream and instructed the archbishop to build a church on a rocky island in the Bay of Avranches. Archbishop Aubert ignored this instruction.

A little while later Archangel Michael, Michel in French, visited Archbishop Aubert in a second dream and repeated his request. Archbishop Aubert ignored this second request. Archangel Michael was not accustomed to being ignored and decided to make one final request. He appeared to Archbishop Aubert a third time and pressed his index finger against Aubert’s temple so hard that it seared the request into Aubert’s brain and left a festering wound. Pro tip – When an archangel tells you to do something, you do it. Don’t make him ask a second or third time.

Archangel Michael drilling a hole in Archbishop Aubert’s temple.

Aubert finally got with the program and convinced a group of Benedictine monks to start construction on a church and abbey on what Aubert now called Mont Saint-Michel.

A lot of people were walking around the sea floor of the bay that was exposed at low tide. Anne-Sophie said that you need a special guide to walk in the bay because there are pockets of quicksand in the bay. She specifically looked at me and said: “Don’t even think about it!”

Anne-Sophie led the group on an informative three hour guided tour of the abbey and church. The tour was an aerobic workout as there are 350 steps to get up to the top level of the Mount and 350 stairs down.

Before they built the causeway people used this fountain to wash the sand off their feet after they crossed the bay at low tide to get to the Mont.

There were a lot of seagulls hanging around begging for food.

While we were climbing the last flight of stairs to get to the top of the Mont the church bells started ringing, calling people to attend the noon Mass.

This is a picture from the top of the Mont looking up at the spire of the church.

A Mass was in progress as we toured the church.

This is the dining hall. There was breakfast and dinner but no lunch. No talking during meals. A monk would read from the Bible and everyone else ate in silence. That sounds pretty grim.

Notice the scallop shell design in this window. After construction was completed on the church and abbey Mont Saint-Michel became a big time pilgrim destination.

The monks supported themselves by copying books. Gutenberg ran the monks out of the book copying business when he invented the printing press. During World War II thirteen hundred of the abbey’s books were taken from the Mont and stored in the nearby town of Saint Lo in order to protect these priceless treasures. During the fighting in Normandy the town of Saint Lo was almost completely destroyed and only seven of the books were saved.