Special Guest Blogger: Mont St. Michel, part two

Mont St. Michel is a fascinating place.  It has so many circuitous pathways and mysterious corners, and a variety of architectural styles that every time you turn a corner you never know what you’re going to see.  It could be a building, a small grassy garden spot or a great view.   We would look over a wall, and see a steep drop like this:

Or maybe a cute little miniature garden: 

The unexpected architectural creations were little surprises, like this small building off the edge of the top of the tower.

For the most part the monastery seems rather plain.  Most of the rooms are bare, stripped of the contents, but the details we can see are fairly simple compared to the cathedrals we are more familiar with in Paris, for instance.  The religious community there was started in 709, and the beginnings of the present church and monastery date to 966.  Over the next 500 years the “Marvel of the Western World” was expanded and reinforced.  The last main work on the monastery was replacing the chancel of the church which fell in when the crypt supporting it collapsed in 1421. That one area was rebuilt before the century was done in a flamboyant Gothic style.  That was the last obvious architectural style for the monastery.  

While part of the church itself sits on the apex of the island’s rock, most is supported by the columns of the crypts underneath, which are done in Romanesque style, except the one that was replaced after collapsing.

The area where the monks lived adjoined the church.  The refectory had a lovely tiled floor, and decorative windows recessed in the walls.  The monks ate silently, with one monk reading scripture during the meal from a raised podium to one side.

The cloisters seemed very different from most of the rest of the island.  First of all, there is a great expanse of flat land!  It contains a carefully planned garden, and it all looks much more serene than almost any other place.  The surrounding colonnades are simple and ornate simultaneously, with variation between the columns along the walkways.

There were many great views from the monastery:  

This is a view of the only access to the island. 

This is a view of the church from the only angle I could get it showing both St. Michael at the top, and the entrance.  If I stepped back any more, I would have been walking on air, sorry!

The inside of the church, note the wooden vaulted ceiling.

An outside view of the monastery:  The top is the refectory, where the monks ate, the floor below is the guest hall, where the nobility and the royals were received, and below that is  another hall to receive the other less important guests, like the fishermen, pilgrims and the poor.

Angie went to Mont St. Michel in 2008 and the visit was a bit faster than she would have liked.  She wanted to go sink her toes in the muddy quicksand left behind when the tide was low but ran out of time.  Not this time!

It took us about 10 minutes to clean her feet afterward.  The goo on her feet was more like a semisolid clay than ocean sand.

Some other people were leaving as we walked to the “beach” and they went in farther than Angie did, apparently:

The whole time we were outside there, like at St. Malo, there was a strong wind blowing.  It was hard to control our hair, and the wind contributed salt, sand and grittiness to it.  Our hair felt like steel wool when we got back to St. Malo. 

It rained as we left Mont St. Michel, and we were rewarded with a double rainbow.