Mont Saint Michel

So this seemed pretty cool... 'Let's go there!'

cut and paste from Wikipedia:

'According to legend, St. Michael the Archangel appeared to St. Aubert, bishop of Avranches, in 708 and instructed him to build a church on the rocky islet. Aubert repeatedly ignored the angel's instruction, until St. Michael burned a hole in the bishop's skull with his finger.'

To get there we stayed in the closest town, called Ponterson. With a little bit of luck we managed to get there on a national holiday unkown to us, and the entire place was a ghost town, and all the hotels and hostels were booked. So this improvising stradegy of ours finally caught up and bit us.... almost.

Wandering around town, knocking on hotel doors and ringing bells at hostels, we were beginning to wonder if we would be sleeping in some farmer's barn somewhere when we came across another couple of travelers. It immediatly became clear that they too were in the same situation. We had to join forces! After some more hotel hunting we came to a campground with cabins for rent. They were booked up, but the guy running the place realized our situation, and was able to make an arrangement for us, there was an empty cabin but people were coming the next day, so we had to be out early and the place had to be clean. We agreed to share the cabin, which turned out to be the nicest, cleanest, and cheapest accomodation of our trip! And to top it off, we made some new friends.

Caroline and Robin were Swedish, and they spoke probably better English than us. They were a few years younger than us, and were about a week or so into their 5 week European tour which they had been saving up for for quite some time. The weather was miserable, and there was nothing to do in Pontorson except for a couple of ratty bars.. so we had a couple of drinks and some pizza with our new friends and later we retired to the cabin. I had my computer so we hung out, and they shared with us their favorite 'are you smarter than a 5th grader' Youtube clips and we counterattacked with our favorite Swedish Chef clips.

The thing to do normally would be to catch a bus up to Mont St. Michel. But we had a better idea. The four of us rented bikes form the campground and took the scenic route!




Getting closer....


Here we are!
..
As cool as this place is, its also pretty touristy. The worst part? The abbey was closed cuz of the holiday. in fact the only day of the year that it closes. sheesh.



Robin, Caroline, Shelly, and yours truly at the cabin.


The worst bikes in the world. Mine had a baby seat on the back, and ironically, after spending a couple of hours on that seat, Im not sure if I'll be able to have kids.

a movie!



Shelly really wanted seafood... and this place, despite being on the coast, did not deliver much option.... so onward for seafood we went.

Tune in next time for 'Eugene eats a skate!'