MONT ST MICHEL // What you NEED TO KNOW Before Visiting // Normandy France

[Music] we have just caught our first glimpse of mont saint-michel so we didn't even make it all the way to the parking area from on st michelle before we saw a really cool photo opportunity right off the side of the road there are all these sheep that are right in front you kind of have to walk through like a little bit of a cow pasture or i guess a sheep pasture it was too good of a photo op to pass up so now we're trying not to step in cheap poop so we're allowed to walk through these sheep fields but according to this sign they don't want you to let any farting dogs in with the sheep is that just american humor or french people think that's funny too i don't know so monster michelle is about an hour and a half from where we're staying near omaha beach it means today is going to be quite a long day since we did some world war ii stuff earlier in the day if you haven't seen that video you should go check it out so in this field is a river which i've seen a ton of photos of all over instagram and all over the internet uh unfortunately it's low tide right now but when the tide does come in the river fills up and creates just this perfect symmetrical winding river still pretty cool to see but it'd be really neat if the water was full we're right about at low tide so maybe on our way out we'll swing back and be able to see if we can get a photo here or something but for now i think we're gonna go hop back in the car and head right over to the monastery there's a parking area at the beginning of the bridge that goes out to the monastery you can't actually drive up close to the island you can either walk or take a free shuttle i believe it's free we've just drove into the main parking area do you have to pay for parking here we'll put the prices of what the different options are and it's saturday so it is very busy but it's like 5 p.m right now so hopefully this crowd starts to clear out pretty soon [Music] at this time masks generally aren't required in france except for on public transport and on the shuttle to mont saint michel i guess so here we are i think this is about a two kilometer walk if you don't take the shuttle and it's free but you do have to pay for parking so is it really free [Music] right the shuttle's dropped us off about 300 meters from the island and we finally made it here i've looked at this in photos forever and it is so surreal to actually be here it looks fake like yeah it looks like something disney would make it's pretty incredible actually [Music] the title swing here is really really intense up until just a few years ago when it was high tide you weren't actually able to access this island because the tide at least this time of year is like a 10 meter or like 30 foot swing so right now we're at low tide but in six hours the sea level is going to be 30 feet higher the only thing that will be dry is the road that they just constructed a few years ago the one that we took the shuttle bus in on so there's been actually a monastery on this island from the 8th century which is crazy and this has been a site of great christian pilgrimage since that time so people would walk out during low tide to the island and you definitely don't want to get stuck here once the tide starts coming in as of 2019 there's only 29 permanent residents on the island and i guess basically they just are working at the abbey or taking care of tourists [Music] we decided to start off with a hike straight up to the top there is the abbey or the monastery at the very top of this you do have to pay to get into it from the research i've done online most of the beauty and appeal is seeing it from the outside but since we came all the way here we couldn't resist walking up to the top it's quite a steep hill so my dad opted to stay at the bottom [Music] the abbey closed at six today so even if we wanted to go up then everyone wouldn't have been able to if you want to visit for service i guess they have services on saturday nights you can do that there's also a cool little like medieval village down here as i said there's only 29 people who live here it looks like there's some shops and different things you can see though just so happened that we came here on a saturday which normally we wouldn't do but you know we have limited time here in france so it just kind of worked out like that so it's kind of crowded that's okay still awesome we're walking around now looking for a place to have dinner there are a few restaurants but it looks like a lot of them are closing up for the night it is like i don't know 7 p.m or something if we can eat dinner here that would be really cool but it's also an hour and a half drive back to our room so to wear options so we did find a place that's open it's got panoramic views of the bay this is the name of the place i cannot pronounce it i apologize for all my mispronunciation of french words because it's hard i decided to go for a dish that is pretty traditional to this area it's called a gallet it's kind of like a crepe like a savory crepe so this one has ham cheese and egg with a buckwheat pancake i got a norman style frequency chicken with pasta it looks and smells really good i love buffalo and that's kind of what this smells like except it has chicken but you know what i got i don't speak french like i didn't even think about the food when we got here i just thought french food but there's like a whole different normandy style of cooking that we've discovered in the last few days which has been really good that looks delicious normandy is france's apple region there are over 800 kinds grown here so when kevin's dinner came with a dessert i definitely said he had to get the apple tart so looks delish i kind of have a feeling that she's going to be eating a lot of it it is about eight o'clock right now and there are significantly less people here than when we first arrived we decided to come out and walk along the outside of the walls when it is a full on high tide this is all covered in water from what we understand i think the tide switched about an hour and a half ago and uh just in that short amount of time you can see how much water has already come in so it's pretty crazy really cool [Music] oh it is so cool here we would love to just stay here for multiple days and check this place out but unfortunately we got a long drive ahead of us so we're gonna head back to the car now i feel like i'm gonna walk backwards the whole way just to take it in so just for reference you actually can do this as a tour from paris but it's like four hours one way so i don't know if that would be the best thing to do maybe renting a car and driving and spending a night out here that would give you a little bit more time because i feel like eight hours round trip is really far it is very cool definitely worth it bucket list checked off [Music] the cool part about this bus it actually doesn't turn around there's a driver's seat in this side and there's a driver's seat on this side so when they get to the end they just get out and walk to the front drive the other way all right we are back at the car and we're ready to make the hour and a half drive back to our room it is just about 9 00 p.m it has been a really long day with all the world war ii stuff we did earlier and then spending time at monster michelle but i have wanted to come here for such a long time and since we were so close we figured why not it was so worth it so we're just gonna head straight back and then tomorrow we are driving through more of normandy and heading back towards paris if you've made it this far in this video thank you so much for watching we really appreciate you you might as well go ahead and hit that subscribe button right hit that thumbs up and if you have any questions or comments feel free to leave those and we'll see you guys tomorrow this is kelly from the aqua tourists peace out so normandy is just littered with concrete bunkers all along the coast as you can imagine [Music] [Music] we've just came into the parking area for mo we've just come we've just kelly's wishing her food arrived [Music] i'm rambling it's like 9 p.m right now you

Channel: The Awkward Tourists

Views: 119,850

Keywords: mont saint michel, france, normandy, france island castle, things to do in normandy france, saint michelle, mt saint michelle, french monastery, most beautiful places in france, best european castles, best of normandy, french island castle, island castle, best places to visit in france, normandy day trips, mount saint michelle, mont saint michel tour, inside mont saint michel, le mont saint michel, unesco world heritage site, mont saint-michel, normandy france, mont st michel

Id: UIfjV7IO0EA

Length: 10min 44sec (644 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 24 2022