After a wonderful French breakfast complete with fresh croissants and rich French roast coffee, our group took a 10 minute coach ride to Mont St. Michel. This massive abbey has both Romanesque and Gothic influences in the architecture. The whole abbey, church and mini town is built on top of a solid rock which turns into a high tide island. The whole place is just incredible. One thing that kept running through my head as we walked up the endless stairs was how did they build this in 708 without any modern day machinery?! It is absolutely mind boggling to think about it.
Up on top by the church there is an open courtyard where you can look out over the ocean and the mainland. We spent some time up here talking pictures. Morgan and Annie reenacted the famous Titanic scene, where Jack and Rose lean off the bow of the ship. It had rained before we got here so there was rain water coming out of gutters down below. The wind would whip up the side of the wall and spray the water over the wall to where we were standing. We decided that here at Mont St. Michel, it rains up instead of down.
We took an audio guide tour around the whole abbey, and then met up at noon for mass with the St. Michel monks and nuns. This was a very special experience. We went down under the main church into a small chapel. The hour mass included a cappella French hymns, communion and a short message; all of which we didn’t understand but could appreciate its beauty. A couple of us even went foreword to be blessed by one of the monks. After mass we split up for lunch. I went with Forrest to a small restaurant overlooking the ocean. I ordered lamb stew and it was wonderful! After walking around and window shopping we took our coach to the nearest airport. Ha! “Airport”? . . . more like a bump in the road. It has one airline, Ryanair, which flies to a whopping four cities. Here we were surprised that our check luggage weight limit was 15 Kg. Most of us were over, a bunch over. So imagine all of us sitting on the floor, suitcases spread out trying to stuff everything we could into our carry-on bags, which of course had to be 10 Kg.
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While I was going through security, I heard my name being called over the intercom. I have no idea what they wanted but Forrest and I ended up going into a small secure room where my suitcase was being held. The guy there didn’t speak English and we of course don’t speak French. After a few stressful minutes, we finally figured out that he wanted me to open my suitcase. He proceeded to search through it, which was of course half full because the other half is in my carry on. I still don’t know what he was looking for but the search was enough for him and he let me go. Hopefully my bag will end up in Stansted with us. As I am writing this our plane is rolling into place so we should be in the air soon. Next post will be from London . . . again.
--Elizabeth Seccomb
