Here’s a post about my weekend trip to Mont-St-Michel:

Mont-St-Michel is a tiny island upon which a massive abbey was built. This is what it looks like when you’re driving up – this picture is from Wikipedia – I didn’t take any from this far away.

The brochure said that the structure dates back to 708 when Aubert built a sanctuary in honor of the archangel Saint Michael, and the mount soon became a focus of pilgrimage. Over time, different parts were added, until it became the massive structure that it is today. This is what the brochure says about St. Michael:

“To Medieval man living in expectation and dread of the hereafter, Saint Michael was the one who led away the dead and put their souls in the balance on the day of the last judgement.”

Here I am in front of Mont-Saint-Michel.

The Benedictines lived in the abbey in the 10^th century, and a village grew up around the walls of the abbey. There are still monks who live here; I was sitting in front of a closed door, and a monk came and asked me if he pass through the door.

This is what surrounds the little island – depending on the time of day and the tide, it's either water or very dangerous sand! Everyone kept telling us not to walk in the sand since there are places that sink quickly, and they said there are often “incidents” with people thinking it’s safe to walk on. (By the way, that’s a rock I’m standing on in the picture – not sand!)

This is what it looks like once you’re on the mountain and climbing up all the stairs to get to the abbey.

These are taken from a higher point of the abbey.

These two pictures are taken in the nave, which was built on top of the mountain, 80 meters above sea level, on a platform 80 meters long. It’s a long rectangular chapel, and on one end it’s Roman architecture (rounded arches), and on the other end it’s considered Gothic (pointed arches) because part of it collapsed in the 1400s and was rebuilt toward the end of the 15^th century, so the architecture had changed.

This is the cloister and is the only part of the abbey that is open to the sky. For this reason, it was believed to be the place of the closest communication with God, so it was used for prayer and meditation.

This is the refectory, where the monks took their meals in silence, while one monk gave a reading.

One more picture with Mont-St-Michel...

After visiting Mont-St-Michel, we boarded the bus to visit the town of St. Malo. This is what we encountered along the way: a ton of bikers for a race and a police officer, who gave our bus driver a citation!

St. Malo is a walled port city. Here’s a picture of it from a distance, again from Wikipedia.

You can see the city wall in these two pictures; the water is to the right of the street in the 2^nd picture.

This is the port at St. Malo, just outside the city walls.

These pictures were taken inside the city.

The trip to Mont-St-Michel was exciting but tiring; we left Saturday at 7am and returned at midnight. This morning I came to class, but my teacher is sick, so our morning language class is cancelled. I'm using the time to catch up on emails and do some work for my classes. Yesterday, I went to mass at la cathédrale St. Gatien, which is down my street. I'll post pictures of the cathedrale sometime soon. After lunch yesterday, I did a lot of reading for my Renaissance poetry class, and I walked around a lot.

I hope you all had a nice weekend!