The Ryndex

We started our day at Mont St. Michel with one last detour. I had been to some of the cemeteries the last time I visited the beaches of Normandy — specifically the American and Canadian cemeteries. This time our route took us past the German cemetery.

The famous American cemetery is an broad expanse of respectfully kept green grass and row after unimaginable row of white crosses. They were the defenders of liberty, and many of them remained here. We didn’t go to the big American cemetery in Colleville this time.

It must have been hard to put together a cemetery for the aggressors, the invaders and occupiers. It must have been well after the war. The German at Huisnes-sur-Mer cemetery has 12,000 bodies of identified and unidentified German soldiers. They’re arranged in a two-story circle of small rooms. It’s a peaceful and thoughtful place.

“If people only knew how hard it is to be wounded, to die, they would all be meek and gentle, would not split into parties, would not incite mobs to attack one another, and would not kill. But when they are in good health they know nothing of this. When they are wounded, no-one believes them. When they are dead, they can no longer speak.”

You can’t see outside of the round structure except from the second story of the back, which looks over calm farmland and the bay of Mont St. Michel.

Mont St. Michel is amazing, especially from this distance. It jags straight out from the bay, its man-made silhouette is unnatural and beautiful. Inspiring. There’s nothing in Canada like it.

Of course, some other tourists arrived, jibber-jabbering on their mobile phone. In a cemetery. In our solitude looking over Mont St. Michel. What sort of planet do these people come from?

The worst part about being a tourist is the other tourists. We have a particular game for mobile phone offenders. It’s called “Martha!? Guess where I am?!” and it involves mocking the mobile phone user by talking to Martha on a pretend phone, and screechily asking her to identify where you are. You have to be there.

These two, by the way, happened to be among the least offensive of the Martha?! targets that we’d end up meeting. Just wait until the Rome travel log…

Our car is so amazingly cool. We drove it to Mont St. Michel, stopping along the way to take some more pictures of the Mont, some cows, and our beloved Citroen.

The parking at Mont St. Michel depends on the tides. When we arrived, they were going out. Some of the attendant booths were still partially underwater. You have to pay special attention to the parking hours for the same reason. If you’re late, you don’t get a ticket… you get a submerged car.

The tides at Mont St. Michel are fast too — it’s said the tide comes in at the speed of a galloping horse. That’s a lie, however. In reality, it comes in at the speed of a brisk walk.

St. Malo has the highest and lowest tides in the region; the bay of Mont St. Michel has some of the longest — dozens of kilometres. At low tide, people walk far enough out that they’re barely specks from the shore.

The view looking up at the church from the parking lot is also impressive. From this distance you can still see nearly everything and the distinctive outline of the mont, but you can also make out details of the church on the peak and the medieval city built up around it.

Unless someone’s big head is in the way. Stupid tourists!

On entering Mont St. Michel, one of the first places you’ll see is the inn of Mere Poulard. She used to provide food and boarding for pilgrims to the mont, whipping up quick omelets on the fire in her long-handled copper pan. Now her name is the premier brand among Mont St. Michel tourist crap: cookies, copper frying pans, omelets, the above items on tins and magnets. If you actually want to eat an omelet or sleep on the mont, her inn is still open. For a dizzying price.

We wandered a bit on the city walls, looking at the view inward and outward, before making our way up to the monastery and church. There’s a lot of stairs to climb, even just to get to the ticket office. It wasn’t particularly crowded, but there was a plague of tour buses. The cashier at the ticket office actually started yelling at the tour groups, telling them that they should keep a respectful volume, that this was still a church and that she would have no problem sending them straight back to the bus that spawned them. She was right.

We each got an audio guide. I’m a big fan of audio guides now. It’s usually worth well worth the price, it’s at your own pace, and you’re easily fed the information you need to apreciate the site.

The view from the top is well worth the trip by itself. The front of the church burned down ages ago, and during repairs, they left a large terrace overlooking the bay and the channel.

Inside the church, they were apparently having a workshop for the kids — There was children’s art here and there: tissue paper stained glass, coloured tile replicas, calligraphy of their names.

We were extremely hungry, so we stopped at one of the overpriced restaurants on the mont. Just like around the Eiffel tower, the tourists and their flowing dollars kill any good food. And in this crushing environment, where the establishment serves more and more of less and less, the service staff becomes unstandably resentful and bitter. Spiteful animatronics that have numbed themselves to dropping barely adequate plates in front of ne’er-to-be-seen-again tourists.

And spiteful tourists, stretch out their cameras slowly with stiffly bowed arms, mouth-breathing as they awkwardly frame the historic monument squarely on the screen, as if suddenly the exact level of zoom has a sense in their artistic aesthetic. As if they’re not taking the photo for the sole purpose of avoiding seeing or thinking about this fleeting instant itself. Don’t kid yourself, you’ll never look at that photo again.

Unless you have a blog! Ka-zing!

But the convertible was hypercool. My next car, if I ever have one, should at the very least have a sun roof.

I wanted to walk out on the bay of Mont St. Michel for a bit, but you have to be prepared for this. It’s extremely muddy, and there really isn’t any place to clean yourself up — the main fountain at the entrance to the site actually forbids you from washing your feet there. I don’t know — maybe disposable thongs and plastic socks? You’re also supposed to watch carefully for quicksand. But I wouldn’t be worried — I float! We all float down here!

We stopped off at a local producer to buy many bottles of pear cider and pommeau, which is an aged cider/apple brandy mix. We broke one of the bottles on my doorstep. It smells really kind of gross.

The next day was our recovery day in Paris. We took the car back, and did the minimum amount of walking we coukd get away with.

Our walking took us to the Institut du Monde Arabe, which has a great view over Paris. One of its walls is covered with irises that open and close automatically to control the amount of sunshine in the building. You have to pass through security to get in, then take the elevator to the top floor.

The bathrooms are also excellent, if you have a pressing need.

We spent some time in the medina afterwards. It’s not a real medina, with the hustle and colour of an arabian market. It’s calm, with piped music and plenty of space to show off the best of arts and crafts from a dozen middle arabian countries. We had mint tea and sugary pastries.

Well, that was our France appetizer. The next courses are Barcelona and Rome!

Tin Foiled Travel