Trip to Mont St. Michel, France

By now we had seen most of museums/churches in and around Paris and we were on look out for a place which is not a museum or church but should something out of Wonderland.

We heard of Mont St. Michel, heard it is small island with a castle constructed in the middle covering most of Island. The Island is separated from the mainland by approximately 1 km which is covered by water 12 hours a day during the High Tide. Island is about 1 km in diameter and about 70-80 meter jutting above the ocean.

Mont St. Michel is on the north coast of France, near the border of Brittany and Normandy. It is around 320 kms west of Paris.

We decided to visit this magnificent structure and Planned for a weekend trip during first week of April. We booked tickets to Mont St. Michel and reserved a family room at Avranches, a small French village 15 kms away from Mont St. Michel. We were team of 7 members.

In order to reach Mont St. Michel we had take the high-speed TGV train from Paris's Gare Montparnasse to Rennes, the train journey was for about 3 hours and went through one of finest and magnificent scenic route with large green landscapes and green top mountains and going through numerous tunnels..

(Picture #1: TGV from Paris to Rennes)

At Rennes we had to take a bus to reach Mont St. Michel, there are frequent buses operated from Rennes to Mont St. Michel, The Bus journey was for about 1 hour duration.

When you approach the Mont St Michel from 10 kms away you would be treated with one of the truly magnificent views. You can see the hill with castle on top from a distance and as you get closer you also see the water.
(Picture #2: First View of Mont St. Michel from the Bus)
(Picture #3: Closer View of Mont St. Michel from the Bus)
For a moment, you begin to wonder how something of this magnitude, this beautiful structure is able to exist in the middle of the water.

You are allowed to visit the castle only during specific times of the day when the tide is low. This has been one of the natural forms of defense for the castle against the invading enemies and the castle is accessible only for 12 hours during the low tide to launch their attack. Apart from this natural defense the entire castle is surrounded by high walls and mountains making it one of the most impregnable structure of all times in the history.
(Picture #4: Mont St. Michel surrounded by Water except the road)


Upon entering the Mont, you begin to traverse a small avenue with shops and restaurants on both sides of the avenue. Many wonderful gifts can be found in these shops. The angle of the incline becomes a little steep as you continue up the avenue.

Some of these shops sold one of the best ice creams and I got to taste one best soft home made Vanilla Ice cream.

Later you will learn that the top of the avenue is only about 1/3 of the height you will climb to reach the top of the Mont.

As you climb the series of steps up to the castle, you think of the history of the Castle, and imagine yourself traveling back in time several hundred years back walking amongst the clergy there at the Mont

The tour of the castles starts in the cathedral at the very top and spirals down through the many levels and is very well laid out.

Once you enter the Castle, it is truly breathtaking, the wonderful architecture that dates back 100s of years. When you reach the top, the view is most wonderful and breathtaking. When we arrived, the tide was still high and water had surrounded most of castle leaving only a road to reach the Mont. However, by the time we reached the top, the tide had begun to subside fast and we were able to swamp land around which was just few hours back covered by Water.
The tide (the bay has the second fastest tides in the world) went out we were to walk around the base of the island, shooting some of magnificent photographs some of which have become wall papers on most of our desktop PCs/Lap tops.

Sitting on the very top while we treated our eyes to one most fabulous views, we lavished on the fabulous ice creams to cool down our appetite.
We spent most of the day and late evening visiting the castle and for the night we halted at Avranches, in comfortable hotel.

Next day we walked the entire length of the road leading to Mont St. Michel while capturing some of the best photos during our walk.
(Picture #5: Mont St. Michel with Low tide in my hands)