Mont-St.-Michel

There is a place where magic happens and all your dreams come true!  So a little better than Disney, don't you think?  This enormous and beautiful place is called Mont-St.-Michel, built in the 11th Century.  It has a fascinating history and is not really considered a "castle" since the central chapel and sanctuaries were used for hundreds of years as an Abbey, then a military fortress, briefly as a prison and now it stands as a national monument and UNESCO world heritage site.

Here's the kicker...St. Michel is completely surrounded by water when the tide is up, so it was an impenetrable fortress and took hundreds of years to complete because they had to build when the tide was low!  Unfortunately, the water was low the day we went and it just looked like muddy shallow land as far as the eye could see.  I filched this picture below from http://quebecparis.files.wordpress.com to give you an idea of how beautiful it can look with the water surrounding it.   

The whole Mont-St-Michel experience was down right awesome!  The streets of the town at the base are tiny and crowded with souvenir shops and restaurants that wind around the island in a slow spiraling ascent until you reach the base of the castle. 

Here's a collage of some of the beautiful things we saw.

St. Michel (Michael the Archangel) is the patron saint of the village and their is a golden version of this statue that was placed on the pinnacle of the top spire by a helicopter in the 80's.

And we weren't able to stay until nightfall to get this shot, so again I yoinked one from http://www.ecoles.cfwb.be for your viewing pleasure.  Definitely worth the drive to visit this beautiful place!