Le Mont-Saint-Michel

After a day of rest (which is necessary on vacation...even though the Teewurst sees it differently...), the last destination of the trip was on the agenda today (see headline).

The drive from our vacation apartment to here also took 2.5 hours. So, get up early again...wow, I was so awake (note the irony!). The journey went quite smoothly...unfortunately, we got lost once and ended up in a traffic jam. What's worse than being stuck in traffic? That's right, being stuck in traffic in the wrong direction....After an estimated 150 roundabouts (traffic lights are out in France), we finally arrived at the parking lot, somewhat awake by now. From here, shuttle buses go to St. Michel or you can walk for 40 minutes. After all the kilometers on the GR, we decided to forgo the shuttle (that's for beginners) and walked towards the destination.

At first, the weather wasn't conducive to picture-perfect postcards. The gray soup didn't seem to want to clear up....

Interestingly, it dissipated more and more as we got closer to the destination.

When we arrived at the village (where 30 people live...), the sky completely cleared up.

Since today was only about this one building, the diversity of the pictures is somewhat limited....

There were quite a few tourists on the mountain, so we decided to walk around the 'city' from the outside. At the beginning of the circular path (which was only there because of low tide), there was a sign warning of quicksand, suddenly appearing sea, and holes in the sand. Oh great, that sounds fantastic! So, stay as close to the wall as possible.

It would have been quite easy if a) you didn't have to hop from stone to stone to avoid sinking in liquid concrete (or whatever it was) or b) you could only find your way over piles of stones (no path available).

Always keeping in mind that the Teewurst was chained to me, I have no sense of balance, and the Teewurst likes to change direction (without warning...). So, the path was not that easy and there were more than a few tourists who looked at us as if they had already pressed the emergency call button....of course, we successfully completed the circuit....

After the tour, we quickly took a few pictures (to make sure we photographed all the buildings from every perspective...) and since we didn't want to go into the city, we started our return after a short break. The further we moved away from here, the grayer the sky became again. No joke! We were not even 5 minutes into the journey when we walked through the same gray soup again. Very mysterious...

On the way to the parking lot, we passed these signs....it's almost blasphemy. They also call everything 'GR'....

Speaking of the parking lot! The exit was so well signposted that we circled it multiple times (I thought we would never get out of here....) until we finally found the barrier. We didn't find a ticket machine during our little spin around the parking lot, so we assumed that we had to pay at the barrier. And we did....14 € for 3 hours (so, no one of the 30 residents in the village has to work. If you extrapolate that....)

After recovering from the shock, we started our return journey. Here, once again, we saw the special relationship the French have with road traffic....people were walking on the highway with shopping bags or simply stopped to relieve themselves (there are things you don't want to see) or were driving (totally logical) on bicycles....guess they didn't feel like dealing with all the roundabouts on the expressway....well, at least we didn't have anyone on the hood of our car.

In the evening, we had crêpes, baguettes, and of course, cider. Tomorrow, we'll pack up and in the evening, we'll have a seafood platter as the crowning finale before heading back to Franconia on Saturday morning....

Until then!