MONT SAINT-MICHEL, FRANCE

years ago i saw a picture of mont saint-michel (probably on pinterest..) & automatically assumed it was a photoshopped picture & couldn't be a real place. luckily for the rest of the world i was wrong & it is a very real place! & a gorgeous, unreal one at that. it truly doesn't seem like it would be real, it also looks as if it was built specifically for tourists with it's tiny alley ways, small shops, population of 50 (yes, you read that correctly), no cars & overall quaint-ness. mont saint-michel most definitely should be on your must-see in france list, it is definitely worth taking a couple of days to visit. plus, it's another unesco world heritage site to check off the list :)
i'm kind of obsessed with the picture of cedar in the sling.. i love his little leg poking out!
a brief history lesson:
 mont saint-michel has been in use since the fifth century under the name Mont Tombe, which changed to mont saint-michel after the monastery mont saint-michel was built between the 11th & 16th centuries. the abbey is gothic-style & dedicated to the archangel St Michael. the monastery gave support to william of normandy (it's even featured in the bayeux tapestry i mentioned in this post& suffered multiple attacks during the hundred years' war between the french & english. fast forward near the french revolution, there the abbey did not have many monks in residence & was closed & converted into a prison. the prison officially closed in 1863 & in 1874 mont saint-michel became a historic monument & in 1979 mont saint-michel & the bay were added to the UNESCO list of world heritage sites.

mont saint-michel is an amazing monastery & huge. my mind was blown while we were there, it was so beautiful, not the mention the views the abbey has. it's straight out of a fairy tale... or hogwarts, cause it looks a lot like hogwarts also. especially when you arrive. there's a bridge that takes goes to mont st-michel but you can't drive there, you take a bus & it shuttles people to & from the island everyday, once the last bus leaves the only people on the island are people staying in one of the hotels & the 50 residents that live on the island! we were staying on the island & while pretty much everything shuts down except for hotel restaurants, it was really cool to walk around what felt like a ghost town & really be able to take it all in without all of the people.

2 comments

  1. just gawking at every picture. this place is MAGIC.

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  2. Your interesting post about Mont Saint Michel France has nudged me to grab a France Visa UK soon. I would love to visit there with my lovely wife to celebrate our 20th wedding anniversary. She always used to rave about France and its popular attractions. So, it is only fitting that I take her to this gorgeous country at least once so that we both can make memories for life.

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