Mont St. Michel and Jacques Cartier

Today was of course wonderful (we are traveling in France, after all), but SO COLD!  I have no way to tell you how cold it is without being profane, which is no way to talk about the Abbaye Mont St. Michel.  We spent the morning wandering through the medieval streets and the abbey itself, and then we went off to the manor house where Jacques Cartier spent his final days.  By this time we were thoroughly chilled, all the way through (they don't heat those manor houses), so we have come back to warm ourselves before heading out for dinner:  tonight, at the Brasserie du Sillon, right across the road from our hotel.

We drove the 45 minutes from St. Malo to Mont St. Michel, making our first brief sojourn into Normandy along the way.  The island of Mont St. Michel has become less of an island in the more than one hundred years that it has been a "modern" tourist destination (after it was a prison, the French state restored it as a monument) so considerable efforts are being made to restore the conditions of the bay, and this has involved making a small causeway on pilings out near to the island, and having shuttle buses run from the parking lots, 2.5 k away.  It is a great system, but it was so cold that by the time the second shuttle bus arrived (the first was too full) we had lost all of our body heat and were not warm again for the rest of the day. 

They offer tours of the bay -- the tides and quicksand are treacherous and it is not recommended to venture out on your own.

It is a  little bit of a walk into the medieval Rue Grande, which winds around the Abbaye itself.  Our first stop was at the little shop "St. James" where I managed to get the little French t-shirt that I promised myself to give to our grandson Magnus.  Ian also took the opportunity to get a toque, which he needed desperately -- in fact, I tried to pay for it while he was still trying it on across the shop!

The Abbaye was very busy, it being s Saturday.  Given the weather, we were wondering what it must be like in the high season.  However, as it said in our guidebook, this was a pilgrimage site for hundreds of years, and those pilgrims must have met with a lot of shops.  There were many groups of teenagers there as well, along with their teachers.

A bride and groom had their pictures taken on the ramparts -- we couldn't believe the bravery of bare arms!

This wheel at the top of a ramp brought supplies to the prisoners in the early nineteenth century.

View from the ramparts looking out into the bay.

After we left Mont St. Michel we went to Le moulin de Moidrey which was interesting in itself, and also had views over the entire bay.

Our next stop was the manor that Jacques Cartier purchased upon his return from his third voyage.  St. Malo was not a healthy place in the summer especially, with so many people crowded intra mur, so he bought a farmhouse outside of town and added to it.

The tour was given in Frnech, and although I was able to make out most of it, we were aided by really nice books with an English translation.  However, the visit was really made for us by our guide, Melanie, who has been working at the museum for twelve years and was still full of enthusiasm.  It was a fascinating visit.