Mont St. Michel, a must or a bust?

Mont St. Michel.

You usually don't hear it without:

"Don't miss it."
"You have to go there."
"It's my favorite place."

Well, call me a curmudgeon, but I could've missed it.  I didn't have to go there.  And, it's not my favorite place.   If I were writing the guidebooks I'd write,

"See it from afar."

I'll admit, it's amazing to be driving down the winding country roads through fields and farms when out of the blue you see the postcard you've become so familiar with right there behind the sheep. At that point, it's fabulous.  That's when you should stop and take a picture.  Maybe you should even have a picnic packed and pull over on the side of the road for lunch and enjoy the view.

But, no one gave us this valuable information.  So we (Lance and I.  And yes, he agrees with me.) continued driving and never even stopped to take that perfect picture because we were under the impression that it would only get better as we got closer, instead of worse.

The towns turn ugly.  In fact, they aren't towns anymore.  They are only hotel strips and bad restaurants and nothing else.  There are hordes of people walking on the side of the road to get there. It looks like a pilgrimage to Mecca (I think that's what it would look like anyway.  I haven't done that yet.) Our visit was on a particularly rainy, windy day and we didn't feel so bad driving past all of the walkers on our way in because we were sure they would be well rewarded.

So, we filed into a muddy parking lot.  It reminded us of spring skiing when you get to the slopes right at opening time and you join the parade to park.  Everyone gets out of their cars and leaves their doors open (just like skiing) to suit up for the long walk from the lot to the mountain.

Then you reach the base.  It's always a little more crowded at the first lift, but you're sure the crowds will thin out.  But, at Mont St. Michel, they never do.  They get thicker and thicker and your ski slope turns into Mackinac Island and instead of a peaceful ride on a chairlift to the top you walk single file up a hill lined with I Heart Mont St. Michel t-shirts and miniature plastic cameras hanging on rubber strings.  (Okay.  I know that you can't have a rubber string, but I don't know how else to describe it.)  I don't even understand this one.  Why is a tourist souvenir shop selling a 2 x 3 inch brightly colored plastic camera on a string like a necklace?  Are the sellers making fun of us in some bizarre way?

So, we climbed up a bit, went to one of the lookout points for a look down at the cars in the parking lot (that were only safe from high tide until 21:00......a detail we found far more interesting than the abbey), turned around, and fought the crowd back down to the exit.

And believe it or not, that's all I have to say about Mont St. Michel.  I think I'd rather climb the 110 steps of Mont St. 40 Rue Monge (that's my address if you want to google it) and smell the smells from the kitchen on 2, smile when I make it to my favorite striped welcome mat on 4, curse the guy's door on 5 that came up one day and yelled at me for making too much noise (it wasn't me of course, it was my neighbor) to finally arrive on 6 (which is really 7 because they count 1 as 0) with a sigh of relief that I'm home sweet home.