Today we sadly left Bayeux; it really has been the most beautiful little town! So off we went in our little car headed to Mont St. Michel which is about three hours away. On the way we stopped at two abbeys. The first one is called Cerisey-la-Foret Abbey. We got to see the outside of it, but they were having a Sunday service so we couldn't go in to tour the church itself. The church still functions, but the rest of the abbey doesn't, so you'll notice some broken walls and other deteriorating buildings attached to the church itself.
The picture to the left shows the view from the abbey to a beautiful chateau across the pond. Very picturesque!
Then we headed to the historic Hambye Abbey. It's a 12th century abbey that is now in ruins. It could no longer support itself starting sometime in the Middle Ages and it was closed completely and quarried for its stone right before the French Revolution. Luckily, a doctor and his wife bought the property in the mid 1900s and it's been turned into a historic site.
If you love ruins like we do, then you would think this is a pretty amazing place. It's the most melancholy and yet fantastic thing to stand in a big, beautiful church and have grass under your feet instead of stone and sky and clouds above instead of a vaulted ceiling. We wandered all around, in and out, for about an hour. There are a few other monastical buildings there from when the monks actually lived in the abbey complex, but they all kind of looked the same so I only included pictures of one or two.
One of the first things we noticed was that all of the stone columns had tons of graffiti scratched into them. My first reaction was to be disgusted (I think graffiti is abhorrent), but then I looked closer and noticed that a lot of the names had dates next to them and the dates were from the 1800s! That's made the graffiti a little more acceptable; in fact, it made it kind of cool! Anything old is good in my book! :-)
This one is Alfred somebody from1853. And the one below is Ed. Thomasse from 1801! Pretty interesting to me that people were scratching their names into stone walls 200+ years ago.
The one to the left is kind of hard to read, but we think it says Paul Bernard 1944. It looks like "Pig" but the ig is actually a 19 and then the 44 sort of looks like lightning bolts. So I don't know if it was a soldier or who it was, but I'm sure they were living through the torment of WWII just like everyone else in this part of France.
The picture to the right is of a couple of other monastical buildings. Beautiful little stone cottage-like buildings.
After that ruined abbey, we headed to the mont! Mont St. Michel is an island with a tiny village located at the foot of a huge monastery located on the top of the rock (mount). It has been a pilgrimage site since 708 A.D. when a bishop "heard the voice of Archangel Michael" (Michel) telling him to build on the mount. The history of the monastery was recorded in official church documents until they were taken to St. Lo for safety during WWII. If you know about St. Lo, it was not a pretty ending. The whole town was pretty much leveled, taking with it most of the 1200 years of historical record about Mont St. Michel.
To reach the island you have to park on the mainland in parking lots that remind me of the parking for a a huge U.S. stadium because so many tourists come here daily. (It's the third most visited site in France.). Then an efficient shuttle picked us up and took us across the causeway and within a few hundred feet of the seawall surrounding the lower part of the village. (The picture to the right shows people walking up the very end of the causeway, and you can see the seawall in the distance at the bottom of the cluster of buildings.)
At that point we started walking up the only road in town, and it's all of about 10 feet wide (no cars allowed on the mont). It's a bit of a claustrophobic feeling because both sides of the narrow road are crammed full of tourist shops selling t-shirts, postcards, and every other souvenir you can think of. It really is very tacky for a sight that looks so beautiful when gazing up at the abbey from across the water. But according to the guidebooks, the street has been full of tacky shops since the place opened in the 8th century. Only for the first thousand years or so they were selling to religious pilgrims. Now they're selling to tourists from all over the world. (It's a big draw for Japanese tourists, especially.)
To give you an idea of how high up on the hill the abbey is located, it takes about 20 minutes of steady walking to get from the main entry gate at the bottom of the one street in the village to the lower level of the abbey where you buy the entry tickets. Then it seems there are more stairs inside to take you up to the church itself. We got here too late in the day to see the inside of the church, but we did hike up to it just so we could take in the gorgeous views of the surrounding tidal basin and walk the ramparts for a bit. (I'm sure I'm going to be quite sore tomorrow!). :-) Tammy made it to the top, gimpy knees and all. She was very proud of herself! I read on the internet that it's 900 steps from the bottom of the street to the entrance to the abbey, but I don't know if that's true. I'll count them tomorrow when we head up there again!
Tomorrow will be another light day. We'll leave the mont as soon as we see the abbey and drive all the way to Albert (about five hours away), stopping along the way to see a couple quick sights. Here's my last attempt at an artistic pic of the mont as seen from the causeway.
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