Dedicated to Larry Speck
Thursday, January 3, 2008 at 12:36AM | 3 Comments 
Location: Saint Marcan, France
I am completely awe struck. The Month Saint Michel was everything I thought it was going to be and more.
I woke up this morning to a beautiful breakfast with tea, bread, eggs, yogurt, juice... it was fantastic. I hitched a ride with Liz to the Mont and she dropped me off pretty far up the road. I took the first round of pictures of the entire Mont from there. After this, I made the long trek up to the village and spent some time looking around and got a croissant for a snack.
From here I went to the Abbaye and started my actual tour. See the deal with the Mont Saint Michel is that it was a village that some king decided to turn into a church dedicated to St. Michael (the archangel) and so he started building on top of the village. Then over time, it because a monastery, then a prison and then a fortress (during the war, since it was on the beaches of Normandy and was a really high place to see things going on out in the ocean). Then in the 1950's they started restoration and now its just a tourist site/church/village. So the Abbaye tour is really the part that has the most history and everything else is just kind of buried underneath it. The reason I decided to visit this building is that I took an architecture class my freshman year as a fine art credit and I had to write my final paper on this building. So I wrote a good 20 page paper about the architecture of the Abbaye and that´s why I decided to go visit. Turns out though, that it is the biggest tourist attraction in France now, last year it surpassed the Eiffel tower.
Anyways, I won´t bore you with all of the architectural awesomeness of the building and I took some pictures so you can see what I saw. After looking at the inside of the building, it was almost sunset so I decided to go for a hike. The deal with the island is that it is a tidal island. At high tide, it really is an island, and a low tide, it's attached to the beach around it. The beach goes on for miles and miles and you can really tell why they invaded France at this point. You could be on the beach and hiking for miles before you would even see land. It´s crazy. But anyways, the tide is really dangerous and apparently travels inland at a speed of 6 meters per second when it is coming in. Cars have to be moved, people are evacuated from certain areas... it´s really dangerous. So naturally, I wanted a piece.
I knew that the tide had come in at 12:45 PM and wasn´t due in again until the next day so I felt safe at 5 PM. I hiked around the edge and then out as far as I could without getting into the quicksand (which was EVERYWHERE). I took a bunch of pictures and stood in awe for as long as I could stand it (it was FREEZING and the wind was whipping by so fast). My boots were sooo muddy when I was finished and I was sufficiently frozen. I called Liz and she came and picked me up and I went back to the hostel to thaw.
I decided to go back up to the pub that I went to last night to get some more food and just before I left, the first 2 of the group of 14 Dutch hitch-hikers arrived. The hostel was completely booked with a group of Christian hitch-hikers who were hitch-hiking from the middle of the Netherlands to Saint-Marcan. I went with two of them to get some food and we had a great time. By the time I had gone to bed, only like 8 had arrived, but they were SOO much fun!! We sat and talked and watched a movie and had a really great time.
Tomorrow is filled with all traveling and it´s going to be pretty tiring I imagine. After the day I had today though, I could probably just sleep all day :)
XOXO
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via FoxyTunes
Reader Comments (3)
YESSS!! I love it... Sooners suck, even from Europe!
Hopefully, you're on your way south to warmer weather this evening. Do they have Tacos in Spain?
I thought you'd like a football update....Longhorns won, Cowboys won, Sooners lost. The End!
Love, Dad
Abbey, Happy New Year!!!
What a fabulous Virtual Christmas Vacation you are providing!!! Brock, Lindy, Scott and I are so excited to see what happens each day. We are learning so much and loving it. Scott suggested you go on all our vacations and he will save a ton of money. WHATEVER!!!
Don't keep us in suspense we love to hear every detail, every day. Can't wait to see you back in Texas. - Lori