{"id":289,"date":"2016-09-08T09:27:29","date_gmt":"2016-09-08T08:27:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hailes.co.nz\/europe\/?p=289"},"modified":"2016-09-23T03:28:21","modified_gmt":"2016-09-23T02:28:21","slug":"28-mont-saint-michael-normandy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hailes.co.nz\/europe\/2016\/09\/08\/28-mont-saint-michael-normandy\/","title":{"rendered":"(28) Mont Saint Michael, Normandy"},"content":{"rendered":"

A very special day at a unique location. \u00a0Mont Saint Michel is a monastery that had its beginings in the eighth century when some monk had a vision to build the original Abby and dedicate it to Saint Michel. \u00a0After three visions and he didn’t do anything about it apparently St Michael poked his finger into his forehead to get him started. \u00a0Anyway it now is this fabulous monastery and village built on a rock at the end of this causeway (now has a bridge over it). \u00a0The land all around is flat and it has these magnificent 360 degree views. \u00a0It is visited by what must be thousands of people every day.\"monastry-sheep\"<\/a>\"monastry-2\"<\/a>\"monastry-1\"<\/a>\"monastry-rm\"<\/a> \"st-m-window\"<\/a> \"dunkirk-m\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"rm-selfie\"<\/a>Being the cheap sakes we are we parked our car near the pub we had eaten at the previous night. \u00a0We had seen people walking from there and parking was stupidly expensive at the official park. \u00a0We set off across these paddocks amongst the sheep droppings and headed for the start of the bridge. \u00a0Estimated about 2km but not much different than if we had walked from the car park,however they did have an option of a free bus although many were walking. \u00a0It probably took us half an hour but it was a beautiful day. \u00a0When we got there we decided that while the tide looked right we would see if we could walk around the outside, \u00a0a bit rocky and wet sand but we achieved it, found what looked like a little chapel but could have been the dungeon for the Hunchback of Notredame.<\/p>\n

We then headed up through the village that had grown at the base of the monastery. \u00a0Hundreds of tourists, expensive souvenirs and food but very very quaint. \u00a0Joined the queue for the monastery itself and took the audio tour. \u00a0Nothing in the way of furnishing and such but a very impressive building with so many crypts and such and of course \u00a0the history around the building itself. \u00a0It even had a “lift” where six prisoners walked inside a big wheel to operate it.<\/p>\n

Headed back down into the village wandered through a grave yard (oldest we found was early 1800’s), had something to eat & drink and headed back off across the paddocks. \u00a0Car was where we had left it. \u00a0It was 6 o’clock and we had discovered local restaurants didn’t open until seven so we just drove the countryside through little narrow lanes and villages. \u00a0Lots of little villages and churches and such, \u00a0Settled on a local hotel in Huisnes Sur Mer where we had grilled ham steaks. \u00a0Turned out we were just a kilometre from our Airbnb accomodation. \u00a0We sat and had a wine with our host, Michelle before turning in.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A very special day at a unique location. \u00a0Mont Saint Michel is a monastery that had its beginings in the eighth century when some monk had a vision to build the original Abby and dedicate it to Saint Michel. \u00a0After three visions and he didn’t do anything about it apparently St Michael poked his finger […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-holiday"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hailes.co.nz\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hailes.co.nz\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hailes.co.nz\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hailes.co.nz\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hailes.co.nz\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=289"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.hailes.co.nz\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":338,"href":"https:\/\/www.hailes.co.nz\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289\/revisions\/338"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hailes.co.nz\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hailes.co.nz\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hailes.co.nz\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}