I survived Le Mont Saint Michel!

Holy crap, that was painful. Le Mont St. Michel was one of the things I really wanted to do on this trip, but I came so close to turning around and going back again, even after we were already there.

Here's the Flickr gallery:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/81692166@N05/sets/72157646501789651/

We didn't get a really late start, but it was still just after 10 before we arrived at Mont St. Michel, having been dropped by dad to get the bus to the island. You used to have to run the gauntlet of parking on the island, but because of an enormous anti-erosion project, all the car parking is now done on the mainland and you have to get the free bus (or not-free chariot) there.

I walked back along the new boardwalk a little way to take some photos, and got back to what can only be described as a madhouse. OK, maybe I lie - you could use any synonym effectively to describe the situation. Because it was high tide, only one of the doors was above the tide line, and the door could only let one person in OR out at a time. So on either side of the door there was an enormous bottleneck. And in typical European style, it wasn't organised at all - it was simply a rugby scrum on either side of the door. There were people yelling obscenities at the security and the gendarmes, it was almost at riot-level. Then the bank-mobile had to get through the throngs, and people were trying to sneak around the outside to beat the queues.

It took us almost an hour and three-quarters just to get past the outer wall and up to the top of the main rampart, where I grabbed this snap looking down on the crowd:

Scruuuuum!

For a while, it was quite peaceful on the inside, as we steered well clear of the major paths on either side of the entrance. But then we reached the entrance area for the abbey, at the top of the Mont, where the estimated waiting time was 30 minutes. It blew out to 45 minutes before we left. By this time we were well and truly tired of queueing, so we gave it a miss.

The main shopping drag is packed as well. You are crammed in tight, and of course people stop and browse the trinkets at the souvenir shop, and don't go in, holding everyone else up. There are some locals that actually live here - even if you paid me full salary I wouldn't live there. The locals seem to think they have right of way to push the tourists out of the way to get past more quickly. I witnessed an Asian family, each one of the 6 had a suitcase as big as a house, walking two abreast. Someone who I assume was a local actually shoved one of the Asian gentlemen back into single file in order to get past. So much rudeness, so little time.

There are hotels on the island as well. Ridiculously expensive though, a single-person room for one night went for as much as 235 Euros! Crazy!

Here are some photos from the area:

Inside Mont St. Michel

Once we were ready to go out, we discovered that they had actually opened up the other two remaining doors, given that the tide had got substantially lower - there were people running around out on the mud flats - pass! Once we got out, the flow of people diminished rapidly, and we walked back along the boardwalk to the mainland. It was much more peaceful, and you could walk at your own pace and stop at your leisure:

The Mont from the boardwalk

We also stopped at the small hotel-oriented village between the parking lots and the island. Here the souvenirs were as expensive, if not more expensive, than on the island, but the surrounds were quite nice. There was a dam there as well, to regulate the water flow in and out of the mud flats around the island:

Hotel village

We just made it back to the parking lot, where dad was supposed to pick us up, before it started raining. We headed into the visitor centre, and saw a video about the anti-erosion project, which is supposed to be finished in a couple of years.

Tomorrow's plan is to go past Mont St. Michel, to some towns, like Dinan and St. Malo. Until then!