Port 71 St. Malo, France

by Ed · May 19, 2022

Bonjour!

We arrive on a gloomy, overcast morning. It is May 13th, 2022. Friday, the 13th. Ugh.

It is so early I can only find two house lights that are on. The obvious one is on the far right. The subtle one is on left. All of the rest are street lights.

We are supposed to “anchor” in this port, but we find this means we are tied to two grounding buoys, fore and aft. No anchors are dropped – good for any reefs below us! Here’s the aft! And we see the clouds retreating in the east!

The sun finally breaks through the horizon clouds. I love the fiery reflection on the water!

The sun glow pleasantly lights up the houses and boats. It’s a cool (52 degree F) and pleasant morning!

Today we have an excursion that fulfills one of Joy’s bucket list locations! I never knew how important this was to her until this week. We are visiting Mont St Michel! We tender to the shore. The city of St Malo hovers in the background behind the wall.

On the bus drive out of the city I try to grab a shot of the street art, but when reviewing the images I lock on to the street sign! Whodathunk we’d see a “(COVID-19)” street sign?

OK, back to the beauty unfolding before us! This watery scene echoes what this area used to be – underwater! Much of this area is reclaimed from the sea!

The lands here are incredibly fertile! The sea is staved off by a sea wall. But once upon a time all of this was underwater.

About fifteen miles out we catch our first glimpse of Mont St Michel rising up from the seabed! Hazy, but there! Wow!

Mont St Michel, and forgive me if I just use MSM, is an abbey, not a castle or cathedral or monastery.

We arrive at a parking lot, have a long walk from the parking lot to the shuttle bus, then pile on the bus to go to MSM! In the village located near the historic site we see a crowd of painted cows!

I spy a chance to snap the mythical MSM as the shuttle turns a corner. This is almost unreal!

And before we know it, we’re in front of it!

Mont St Michel is beautiful! I never knew of this until Joy told me about it. The golden scultpure of the Archangel Michael shines at the top of the spire! We’ll see more of this!

We learn there are sixteen people who live here permanently. Twelve are Jerusalem Society monks and nuns, and four are local site mangers. Another 100 people commute in every day to work at the abbey and the village below.

We finally begin our ascent to the abbey. I notice this cable lift. They have to get supplies up the hill. Who wants to carry everything up the stairs? This makes a lot of sense.

Here’s a glimpse at history. The lowest window is actually from the original abbey. Now it has become part of the crypt, and forms the foundation for the current abbey! You can see the stone structure change above this lonely window as the abbey rises above, then change again above the arched windows, then again above the first square lintel windows! Changes came with the centuries that have passed!

This slanted buttress caught my eye. After seeing the cable lift, this one looks important to me! We’ll see what’s at the top in a few miutes.

After a couple of hundred steps of climbing we finally arrive at the ticket gate! Whaaaat? Yup. The site is free up to this point!

Our ticket QR codes are scanned, and we’re on our way up, up, Up, UP!

I believe I mentioned there are Jerusalem Society people currently living at the abbey. There are men…

…and women. One dozen altogether. They eat separately, but there are conditions under which a woman eats with the men, and a man eats with the women, as proven by these two photos. But they all eat in silence as scripture is read by one person. See them?

We walk under some phenomenal architecture! I learned of flying buttresses when studying the Cathedral of Notre Dame during high school Humanities. I think they are beautiful anywhere! Parts of this structure (started in the 8th century AD (CE)) may have preceeded the Cathedral of Notre Dame (12th century AD (CE)), but I’m not sure this part did.

We climb more steps! The square structure is a cistern for storing rainwater. There are several of these around the abbey.

I keep looking up! Archangel Michael is still gleaming brilliantly!

We reach the church at the top! This facade is surprisingly simple, given the rest of this abbey. Did something bad happen?

Alan, our tour guide, tells us yes, this is true. The chapel used to extend all of the way to the indent in the pavement. But after the last fire and destruction there were insufficient funds to build it out, so they closed it off and applied some minor ornamentation.

Before we go back inside I take a look around. This is the view to the north. It is still low tide, and the rock on the right is one of two other options St Aubert was given as sites for the abbey.

Then we enter the main church itself. Wow! At first I am struck by the height of the ceiling! Then I’m struck by the variation in color of the stones! Then I’m struck by the difference in architectures from the back to the front!

The apse is notable not for its ornate background for the altar, rather, it is notable for the soaring windows and the light it lets in!

I mentioned the different architectures. This is the back part of the nave. The rounded arches indicate a 12-13th century Norman architecture…

…while in the view of the nave and into the apse we see pointed arches, a clear sign of 15th century gothic architecture. Gothic design allows higher structures with better weight distribution than round arches alone.

This interesting ship is hanging from the ceiling. With the broken lines and possible cobwebs Joy dubbed this the “Black Pearl”!

There were very few sculptures in MSM, but this one is interesting! This is clearly Adam and Eve being expelled from the Garden of Eden. This appears to be a frieze salvaged from some other construction.

OK, I know this isn’t very pretty, but it is interesting! This stairway goes to a door in a wall that doesn’t appear to have room to go anywhere. And watch out for that last step at the door, especially if you are coming out of the door!

This is the Cloister, a place for the monks to meditate. Peaceful!

And from the Cloister, always looking up!

This is the Rectory, where the monks met to dine.

Someone asked if Walt Disney was on the design team!

This relief depicts the Archangel Michael in his last appearance to St Aubert, placing his thumb on Aubert’s forehead and burning a hole through his skull.

Below the Rectory is the Guest Hall, where visitors to the abbey stayed. There are two huge fireplaces at the other end! You can actually see them in this photo – check it out!

We descend once more to the crypt that is under the organ in the sanctuary. We find this sign and Martin decides to play the part! Laughs all around! But no one has called him a saint yet… Maybe one day, Martin!

We are next taken over to this room. I call it the Hamster Wheel! Remember that slanted buttress I saw from below and thought it looked important? This is the device that pulls supplies up the ramp. We were told six prisoners were required to step inside the wheel and make it turn to haul up supplies. Ta da! Hamster Wheel! Pitiful that monks had slaves!

OK, more steps up!

This is the Scriptorium. This is where monks spent hours each day creating copies of manuscripts. Some, as I expected, were illuminated with gold leaf and borders! Only about 200 volumes remain of the thousands of books that were estimated to have been copied.

And now we go down, down, down. Easy for some, very difficult for others. Apologies for the blurry image, but it was much darker than this suggests, and we were on the move, so I was happy to have this level of clarity!

Back at ground level we see this copy of the statue of the Archangel Michael that sits atop the MSM spire! For an angel he is very well armored!

We receive a little free time in the village at the foot of MSM. It is crazy busy! That’s our tour guide, Alan, in the orange trousers and golden jacket!

After our stop for overpriced crepes and cappucino we head to the meeting spot. This is the final gate out of the village of Mont St Michel.

As we gather and queue up for the tram ride back, I snap this farewell shot of MSM. Thank you! This would have been so much more fun at high tide, with this floating in the water, don’t you think?

We get back to the tender dock. It is obvious we have been at low tide – look at all the boats stranded on the sand! We decide to head into the walled city of St Malo to look around.

I’ll simplify life here. I won’t clog this blog up with another 20 photos because that’s what the St Malo cathedral will require to understand what it really looks like! So I’ll leave this town with this simple emblem that is hammered on the ground throughout town. This is the ermine emblem of the city! The ermine, in winter, becomes a mink. The ermine values its own fur enough that it would rather face death than ruining its own furry coat by trying to escape swimming across a lake!

An hour and a half later when we come out of the city and head to the tender pier we see the water has returned, and all of the boats are now floating!