02 April - Le Mont St Michel (Day 74)

What a disappointment early in the morning! I woke up at 630am and reached the train station at 8am. I went to the counter to buy a train ticket to Brest but the man couldn’t speak English and so I was referred to another lady who speaks English. She told me there was no train leaving at 0830hrs. But I have checked the website yesterday. She said the next train would be at 0935hrs but cost 24.40 euros, double of the 0830hrs train because that train was the TGV bullet train. The one I wanted to take was TER lousy train. She checked again and said no again. Not wanting to pay more, I changed plan and bought a ticket to Le Mont St Michel instead. While waiting for the train at the platform, I felt more and more baffled as I was quite sure I didn’t make a mistake when checking on the website. And I remember I saw that there was train to Brest at 0830hrs displayed on the board just now in the train station. I guess either she heard me wrongly and mistook for another city or my pronunciation was inaccurate. But I pronounced Brest the same way when speaking to my colleagues and they all understood. I was really disappointed because I wanted to go to the Oceanopolis, the underwater world which is very famous in the region. Well I think next week I would write down the destination and show at the counter.

The train came at 0835hrs and although it was TER train, it was very high class and comfortable. The train was bound for Caen, a city in Normandy and would pause at Pontorson, a town which I had to get off to take a bus to Mont St Michel. Halfway through, I went to the toilet and opened the door. To my horror, I saw a black man sitting on the toilet bowl inside! Must have scared the shit out of him (literally)! Why didn’t he lock the door? Luckily it wasn’t a lady if not I would die big time. I dared not go and try again later but when the train neared my station, I really wanted to piss. Hence I went to the toilet again and the door was open. Ok. So the rule is this: The door has no lock. If it is closed it means someone is inside. Super embarrassing, but I think the black man felt even worse. I alighted at Pontorson but didn’t know where to take the bus. So I looked around and found some notices. Following the direction I came to the bus station. I had to wait another half an hour before the bus arrives according to the timetable. Just to be sure, I double checked with some French tourists. The bus came at 1015hrs and I realised that the driver could speak English. This was probably because Mont St Michel is such a famous tourist attraction in France (3rd most visited place according to my tutor, who coincidentally is called Michel too).

The ride was 15 min and when the coach was approaching the destination, I held my breath when I saw Mont St Michel. It is a monastery built on top of the hill on an island which is linked to the mainland by a road. From afar, it is like a pyramid hanging in the air because the sea joins with the sky and the monastery is in the middle. No wonder this place was the first to enter the World Heritage List in 1979. The coach reached at the foot of the abbey and there were quite a number of tour coaches there. And now it is not even holiday season yet there were so many tourists and a lot of Japanese. Along the street there were many souvenir shops and some of them were dedicated to just Japanese tourists. Some of the shop attendances even said “konichiwa”! I thought French are proud people but when it comes to earning money, one has to be practical. I saw one French female tour guide leading a group of Jap and she spoke fluent Japanese. Then I came across this restaurant that sells omelette and this shop is more than 100 yrs old! I know about this from the guide and quickly took a picture of it. I paid 5 euros to enter the abbey and learnt that 5 min later there would be a guided tour in English at 1100hrs. I asked how much would it cost and found out it was free. The guide was a young man with short purple funky hair. He said today was his first day as guide and would try his best to explain everything. Then he asked everyone where they were from. There were just 3 groups of people. The first was an American family (father, mother, 4 kids and 2 grandparents) who were staying in Belgium now. The 2nd group was a Japanese youth together with his French buddy and a French madam. My guess is the Jap was here on exchange and had a family stay in that French guy’s house. The madam should be his mum. The last group, well not a group actually was just me. And the tour guide forgot to ask where I am from!!!

We went into the church which is right at the tip of the hill and sat on the benches. From here on, I will try to give as detail as possible the content of the guide. First, a brief history of the abbey. It was first constructed in 708 AD, by Aubert, the Bishop of Avranches. He was ordered by St Michel (Michel == Michael) the archangel to build a monastery on top of the hill. This task was quite impossible at that time and Aubert ignored the order. Then he had another vision of St Michel again and again he declined to build the abbey. Finally, St Michel appeared in his dream for the 3rd time and this time he pressed his thumb on Aubert’s forehead. Aubert woke up and found a hole on his forehead and hence quickly built a small insignificant church. 2 centuries past and nothing happened. Until the 11C, the Duke of Normandy started renovating the place, adding more and more levels and making it grander. So as the centuries passed by, the originally modest little abbey grew in size as well as status. It became a symbol of pilgrimage for the western civilization and was comparable to Jerusalem. However, its religious purpose came to an end during the French Revolution (18C) when the army transformed the entire place into a prison. The prison was closed down after the revolution and was again open for public. More adding of structures was done in the 19C.

After going through the history, he then gave us an orientation of the church. Directly in front of us was the altar and the church choir and that would be east because the choir has to be facing the east. Behind us was west, on our left north and right was south. The church couldn’t possibly balance on the tip of the hill and hence below the church there were crypts with large pillars supporting the structure. Then he led us to a little garden which is called cloister. It is a square with lots of pillar surrounding the grass patch at the centre. On one end of the square, there is a big glass window through which we could see the beach below and the river. The river (forgot the name) separates Brittany and Normandy. Mont St Michel is in Normandy. From where we stood, we could see the beach at low tide which stretched over a few km before reaching the sea. However, when it is high tide, the place would be flooded, including the carpark. Hence, twice a month, they have to put up notices telling people to park the cars somewhere else. And the tide comes very fast. There is a saying in the past, “the tides comes as fast as the galloping horses”. But in actual fact, it is 2m/s, according to the guide which I think is very fast.

He said that during the French Revolution when the abbey was used as a prison, there was no glass window. The big piece of glass window was only added in the 19C. Some of the prisoners would just jump out to end their lives. On the pillars there were some pictures of animals and mythical creatures which were used to symbolize the garden of Heaven. However, some sculptures of Jesus and other saints were destroyed or had their faces damaged. This was because the French Revolution was all about overthrowing the royal monarchy which was very much connected to the church during that time. Hence they would destroy all things that are linked with the church. Next we went to a room which is called Reflector. There was a kind of visual effect when we first entered. The room was very bright but there were only 2 windows right at the other end. As we moved on, we realised that there were in fact a lot of stainless windows (57 of them) at the 2 sides; each was partitioned by a block jutting out from the wall. The block was tilted and it gave us a kind of feeling like as we moved further on it was brighter in front and darker behind us. This was the room where the Benedictine monks had their meals and one of them would climb some steps to a little area and read the Benedictine code. Benedictine monks are a group of people who lived in seclusion and devoted their lives to only religious work.

Thereafter, we went to another room which was used in the past to welcome people from the royal family. It was a long room (35m long) with pillars in the centre. This was below the church so it helps to support the structure. We went under a chimney which was 30m tall. Next we proceeded to a room called Crypt of Great Pillars and it was purely gothic architecture. There were some Romanesque architecture also in other parts of the abbey. By the way, Romanesque architecture was before the 12C while gothic came after that, and was at its height during the 13C and 14C. So in this room it was very dark (gothic style of course must be dark) with gigantic pillars which serve again to support the church above. Originally the pillars were thin Roman type but later they just built around it with gothic style. We then moved on to the Crypt of Saint Martin. The thing to note in this room is the thick wall which is about 2m thick. In the past, the people just wanted to build something bulky and heavy in order to support the structure.

We were actually just halfway through the tour here. All the while the guide would pose some questions and the American father seemed to be a Mister-Know-All. We came to this room with a gigantic tread wheel. When this place was a prison, 5 or 6 prisoners would run on the wheel so as to hoist supplies as heavy as 3 tons from the foot of the hill. It reminded me of hamster running the wheel. Before the abbey was a prison, there was no wheel and the place was an ossuary, where the exhumed bones were preserved. The guide then showed us a wall that was wet and told us not to touch it. I thought it was for some religious reason. He said there was a very bad leak recently and the level right above us was the toilet. That explains the funny smell when we first entered the place. And forgot to mention this. Somewhere on our path down to the crypts, we saw a big wall sculpture of St Michel pressing his thumb on Aubert’s head. The head of St Michel was destroyed again by the army during the French Revolution. And the American father asked the guide was the abbey taken by the English during the Hundred Years War. The guide was a bit stuck with words and said that it was very difficult for English soldiers to attack the place with their heavy armors as they would drown or be sucked into the quicksand. What he said probably was true but what I read was that during that war, military defences and walls were added to surround the abbey and made it impregnable. The American then asked if it was taken by the Germans during WWII. The guide said there were just 5 or 6 of them stationed here; just to show a sign that they had the place occupied.

The next room beside the ossuary was the Chapel of Saint Etienne which was used to pray for the dead. It is situation between the ossuary and the infirmary. So the design made sense. The bodies were burnt in the infirmary, prayed for in the chapel then kept in the ossuary. The 2nd last room was another full of pillars but something special about the architecture. There is a mixture of Roman and gothic style. Actually it was the first attempt of the gothic architecture because it was built during the early 12C. The arches are gothic while the pillars are Romanesque. Hence the arch didn’t start at the middle of the pillar but was slightly misaligned. The last room we came to was the Knight’s Hall which was used by the monks as a scriptorium. The monks would write the Bible and manuscripts here and there were 2 fireplaces to keep the place dry. There was just one more room left which in the past was used by the monks to receive the poor but now it has been used by the tourism office to sell souvenirs. Kind of contradicting. With that the tour ended within 50min. I would say the guide was very competent even though it was his first day. And the guided tour made everything more meaningful and I would definitely try to plan the timings for the end tour such that they coincide with the guided tour timings. I saw some tourists renting cassette players for the audioguided tour. I feel it is inconvenient, non-interactive, and I think it is not free.

I went back to the starting point as I wanted to retrace everything again and to take pictures of those special things that the guide pointed out. I returned to the church and wanted to enter from another door but was stopped by the nun. She was quite young and stood there by the door telling me in French to enter by the main entrance. She didn’t look at me when she talked but just looked at the floor. Her presence alone made me obeyed her instructions immediately. I just sensed that she had some kind of holy aura. I went behind her and took a picture of her and was hoping that it wouldn’t be too offensive. Then the church choir was singing and they were conducting masses at 12 noon. But no photo taking was allowed of course. After spending another hour going through everything, I went to the streets and shopped at the gift shops. By this time, the place was flooded with tourists, esp. Jap. I went to every shop and found that they were selling roughly the same kind of stuffs. In the end I spent 10 euros on a paperweight (those type with water and snow inside) and a model of a sail. I wanted to buy a statue of the Archangel St Michel but it was too costly. By the way, at the end of the tour, the guide then told us who St Michel was. He was the leader of the heavenly militia and had wings on his back. Normally he carries a sword and a scale and is the symbol of knighthood. He is also the dragon slayer, and the dragon was depicted as Satan then.

After walking through the streets and on the ramparts, I went out of the main gates. Following some other tourists, I walked as far away as possible from the monastery. The view from the foot was ugly. To take a real nice classic picture of the pyramidal monastery, I had to walk quite a distance away. That was when I saw a lot of sheep on my right, quite far away. The most classic picture of Mont St Michel is to have the monastery at the background and the sheep at the foreground. I guess that was where the tourists were heading to. But they just kept walking and walking, with the sheep all the while parallel to them on their right. Why didn’t anyone just cut across the field? Although the grass was quite long but it wasn’t impassable. So I decided to just cut across the field and realised that there were some deep drains or streams hidden by the grass and I had to jump across them. But it wasn’t that difficult. Until I reached very close to the sheep did I realize that I was being “gei kiang”. The sheep were at the other bank of the river! There was this big river (the one the separates Brittany and Normandy) but because the grass was too long, I couldn’t see it at first. Actually since it was low tide, I could take off my shoes and walk across. But I was afraid that there might be quicksand which the guide did warn us. That explains why no one cuts the field. Everyone would walk to the very far end where there was a bridge. But I didn’t see anyone at the other side of the bank where the sheep were and so I guess that area was unreachable. I had to make my way back, walked among the long grass and jumped over the streams again. Super boliao.

With an hour more before the bus came, I walked on the bay around Mont St Michel. Then I saw a couple near the rocks. The guy was positioning the camera so that he could use the timer to take a picture of himself with his girlfriend. However, the rock was uneven and he had a hard time doing it. Since I got nothing to do, I went up and offered to help them take the picture. We chatted a bit and then I left. I walked one round around the island and went to the bus station. While waiting, I just watched the tourists taking pictures of the place. I couldn’t help but start thinking about my tour again when I saw a British couple going through their itinerary for tomorrow. My idea of a good fulfilling tour is to have someone explain to you what you are viewing and to have time to rest in between places. After 40min, the bus came. Although I was disappointed early in the morning, I did have a good trip today at Mont St Michel. Anyway, I could still go to the underwater world next week.