04/28/2026 – And the rest of the area is pretty nice, too!
We bade goodbye to Elena and Chris at breakfast as they left early to get back to London at a decent hour. We then jumped in our car and made our way to Mont-St-Michel. Mont-Saint-Michel is the second most popular tourist destination, just behind Paris. It is a Benedictine Abbey which began to be constructed in the year 966. The local Bishop claimed that St. Michael the Archangel himself pressured the Bishop into building an Abbey on top of this rocky island just off shore. It is stunning to see, even from miles away. As you approach, you see this amazing hilltop stone structure rising above the flat plain. How they built this huge structure on a tiny rock mass over 1,000 years ago boggles the mind. People have pilgrimaged to this location, through the shallow waters, ever since it was built. (Well, at least until 1879 when a causeway was built to access it. Later, in 2009 a dam was built to reduce the silt that had accumulated after the bridge was built and the flats were turned into pastureland. A new bridge and parking lot were finished in 2012 making the walk to the Abbey only 1.5 miles now.) The pilgrimages continued all these years despite the fact that the area has the highest tides in all of Europe and even during the various cross-border conflicts that have occurred throughout the ages between the Normans and the Saxons (anyone recall the Hundred Years War?). In fact, the base of the monastery was built as a defensive structure to keep the filthy Englishmen out. (Apparently, taunting them more than a second time was not enough!)
After the visit, we grabbed some lunch from one of the various vendors on the island and started eating while walking back toward our car. Kathy wanted a ham and cheese panini, but wanted it cold, not heated. The lady said she could not give her a cold panini. Some miscommunications later, the lady told her that, yes, she can get cold sandwiches. Kathy was relieved….. until…. she saw the lady put her panini into the hot press. Apparently, paninis are NOT sandwiches. Kathy’s gasp at the sight humored the nearby crowd. Dave agreed to exchange sandwiches with Kathy… until Kathy considered that the panini was nothing more than a ham and cheese sandwich, which would be okay heated. Or, maybe she could wait until it cooled back down? The many ups and downs of this saga came to a screeching halt while walking on the bridge. The “screeching” was a seagull who swooped down and tried to steal Kathy’s panini. To the seagull’s defense, he thought he was doing Kathy a favor by ridding her of the dreaded hot sandwich. Kathy was not pleased, though, as the sandwich had actually become one of her favored meals in all of France. Fortunately, she had consumed almost one-third of it before the airborne heist, so she had her fill. Especially, since she knew she had also purchased a jelly doughnut to tide her over.
Next up on the agenda was a trip to Caen to see the Abbey of St. Etienne where William the Conqueror’s remains are buried. Dave navigated the streets deftly and we arrived at the monastery which William had built so as to gain the blessing of the Pope to marry a close relative. The church was marvelous and had relics (bones) of many saints inside. And, there, in the middle of the choir, was the tomb of William the Conqueror… or at least one of his femurs. Apparently, his grave had been ransacked several times throughout the ages and his bones scattered. They could only find the thighbone in the 1600’s to place in the current grave.
After the Abbey, we started toward Rouen to see a famous clock tower and the grave of Joan of Arc, but when the GPS said it would take 4 hours to get there, and it was already 7 pm, we turned around and headed back to the hotel. We had dinner in town and rested. It has been a long week filled with fun and wonder.
