Mont Saint Michel

Since I missed a day of blogging, I have an entire adventure to catch you guys up on. Yesterday we took a day trip to Mont Saint Michel, a centuries old abbey/monastery and later fort and prison. It looks like a giant castle blanced (somewhat precariously) on a rock, and of course Carolyn declared that it looked like Hogwarts (she also said the same about Bates College). During low tide, the huge building is surrounded by sand but after the tides rise, it becomes an island.

In this picture, you can see some of the construction going on to repair and maintain the old castle.

The sheer enormous size of the monetary may look awesome now; however, after you've had to climb all the stairs up to the base, and then all the ones inside, it gets a little tiresome. And although our Grandmother and her sore feet may disagree, I still thought it was worth it. We took an audio tour of the monestary, which I though was very interesting and as a result, forgot to take pictures of every single thing. Here's what I did photograph:

One of the many entrances and turrets of the monestary (ignore e random person's head. There were too many other tourists there to get a perfectly clear picture).

The bell tower and another entrance

The monestary was full of arches. Arches in the gardens, over doors, over windows, supporting the roof. Absolutely full of arches.

These pictures are all of the actual chapel. The room is shaped like a cross, and the first four pictures are of each limb/branch (so yes, we were standing in the Literal Heart of Jesus in a stone cross-shaped room). The last picture is of the alter. One thing I found really interesting about the monestary is that, despite it being a World Heritage site and popular with the tourists, there's still an order of monks that live, work, and worship here. While we were in the chapel we saw two of them, a man and a woman (which I found interesting, since I thought that all monks were men), praying. Then later, while we were in the souvenir shop, we saw another monk talking to the tourists. He seemed very nice, but sadly we couldn't understand his French. I guess we weren't doing as well on French as we thought we were...

The impressive Romanesque arches supporting one of the rooms.

More Romanesque arches, with Carolyn standing next to one for size comparison.

During our tour, we learned a lot about the history of the monestary. Built sometime in the 12th century (but I'm don't entirely remember the date), it was originally a place for the monks and abbots to worship. Neither of us knew the difference between the two, so Grandpa informed us that the abbots were the head monks who eventually decided that they were more important than the average monk. They gave themselves better accommodations than the simple-living monks and took on more power. Eventually, they got involved in the political affairs with the rest of the country. Later, during the French Revolution I think, the monestary's position on an island created an easily defendable location and it turned from a place of worship to a fort. Fast forward some time in the war and it became a prison for political prisoners. Eventually it returned to its original position as a monestary and continues to be so to this day.

After we were done with our audio tours, we stopped at a crêperie (a crepe store) in one of the stalls at the bottom of the monestary before dipping our feet in the incoming tide. Overall, it was a pretty fun day! Once again, it's too late to upload my posts that are behind but I'll try and get them up tomorrow, ASAP. Till then!