7 July 2003

Mont St. Michael

The drive from Senlis to St. Malo, Britagne (pronounced Bri tan ya) goes through the French region of Normandy.  The countryside in this part of France is hilly and seems to be mostly populated with British folks who re-located to here after selling their overpriced homes in London. 

As we got nearer to the Britagne portion of the French coast we could see an ancient structure very far away sticking up out of the ocean.  It looked like something out of King Arthur’s adventures.  At the very same moment Jay and I said, “Let’s go see what it is.”  The object turned out to be The Mont St. Michel Abbey (Abbaye du Mont-Saint-Michel www.monum.fr). 

The very top of the abbey sits on a giant rock and was built around the year 708.  Many old buildings surround the church.  At the bottom of those buildings is a fortress wall.  All of this sits on a rock that seems to just sit in the ocean about one half mile from the shoreline.  We had to see it up close so we just kept driving towards the rock.

At the shoreline we paid to park our car.  Then we walked a long way across a sort of a causeway to get to the first of a zillion steps.  As I walked towards the abbey I was struck by what an amazing experience I was having in France.  I felt pretty lucky at that very moment.

When we climbed the endless steps to the top of the church I was breathing pretty hard. Travel is not for the faint of heart!  The steps seemed endless, but once we reached the top of the church the view towards St. Malo and back towards Granville was magnificent.  The sun had just come out after a rain so there was a mist rising from the tide pool on either side of the causeway that leads back to shore. 

That night we stayed at a Hotel Vert for $55 (including breakfast) and ate at a fancy restaurant called le Pre-Sale (meaning Before you Exit).  We ate what they called regional food:  hake (fish) and a fresh green salad with walnuts and a light olive oil dressing.  They served butter with the bread.  The French don’t serve butter for the bread in restaurants normally so Cat went crazy putting tons of it on the hard bread.

Halfway through dinner a huge woman walked into the place with her little Yorkie dog on a leash and sat down.  I will never get used to people bringing their dogs into places like restaurants and grocery stores.

The next morning we had breakfast (petite dejuner pronounced day jew nay) at the buffet offered at our hotel.  We could choose from hard-boiled eggs, hot cocoa or coffee, jam, yogurt, luncheon meats, cereal, juice, fruit cocktail, cheese and drinking water.  All of this was served along with huge baskets of croissants or bagguetts (long sticks of bread).  The woman who serviced the buffet was very friendly and wore high heels with fish net stockings.  I kept wondering if she was crippled at night after walking so many miles in those shoes in one day.

After breakfast we drove to St. Malo.  For a while I was lost in my own thoughts.  I was thinking of many of the places I’ve visited in this world.  Places like New Zealand, and farming towns in China.  Places like Shannon, Ireland and St. Petersburg, Russia. 

I thought about all those people I’d met along the way and you know what I was really thankful for?  I was thankful that somehow I had gotten beyond the fear of things I don’t know or understand. 

I was thankful for a sense of adventure, and for reading all those history books when I was a kid because they instilled in me the knowledge that there are a lot of places to see in this world, and an awful lot of people to get to know.  What I learned along the way is that most of those people are just like me…they love their families and they want to live in a world where those families can grow up to be happy.