Well, we finally got to Mont St Michel! And how beautiful is it? Absolutely stunning, breathtaking and magical. We ended up taking the bus here, since the trains still aren't running but that let us spend a night in Granville. We would absolutely recommend a day trip to Granville if you're in the area, just a ten minute walk from the bus/train station is the city center (most of Europe calls their downtowns "city center/Centre") Everything is right next to the water, so that's a plus. Once we arrived we walked to the hostel and found there were no open beds...so we called the place they recommended..no open beds. Needless to say we called five other places and finally found one bed, needless to say its a popular place (not to mention walking into a hospital asking for " a room for two tonight? " then being laughed at as you found out it was a hospital. Yes my UVA friends, other nurses have views of the St Michel Bay on their work days) So, after settling into our newly shared twin bed...we found a bar with tapas and the football game so life was good.
After downing tons of pan au chocolats, cracking a raw egg onto my plate (thinking it was hardboiled), and coffee we got on a bus to Mont St Michel. The visitor center offered free lockers to store our packs, we hopped onto the free shuttle and made our way. Once walking in you felt like you stepped back into mid evil times with stone walls and German style store fronts- we scoped out the perimeter and found where we wanted to eat after touring the Abby. (Obviously picked a place with the stunning view) you don't need to pay to walk through MSM, just the Abby. Since were young we paid half price (score!) And then paid a bit extra to have an audioguide. The Abbey was absolutely stunning, as we made our way down the funnel shaped building we learned how genius the architects were to keep everything structurally sound (even through all the wars and stress of time)
One bit of advice for MSM-really plan your trip timeline. We didn't get to see the tide come in because we arrived during the few days it doesn't reach MSM (first world problem) and we missed the free guided tour from the Abbey back down by 15 minutes. Then missed the guided tour out to the bay by 30 minutes because we forgot to allot 2 hours for French standard time lunch. Don't get us wrong, still an awesome trip but as much as we researched we didn't think specific times would matter. We also decided to venture out into the bay by ourselves (despite all the signs saying it's to dangerous without a guide due to the tides and quick sand) and you should definitely get a tour guide to enjoy it. But we made it by following foot prints from guided tours so it was a win.
So- after sending off some postcards and grabbing lunch. We decided to walk back instead of the shuttle, grab some food from the market for a picnic. We met in the wine section "Shane I found wine for 2 euros" "Awesome" then in unison "Should we get two?" We guzzled one down at lunch and the other is in the fridge waiting to be guzzled...maybe breakfast.
Our B&B hosts picked us up at MSM (awesome!) and welcomed us with tea and a suggestion of where to see the world cup game. We have since decided we want to open a B&B at some point, you get to meet so many people and get full time pau for part time work! After dinner we visited the local watering hole, which happened to be a English pub with €2 beers! Tomorrow we head to St. Malo and supposedly a music festival so it should be a good weekend.
Cheers,
Shane & Stephanie
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