Holiday Pics: Mont St Michel Set 2

[lyore]

Set 2: Mont St Michel, Exteriors and shots from the village.

























All the pics have been resized, but if they are too page-bendy, let me know and I'll try and fix that.

Comments

[vasher.livejournal.com]

Now that is what I call a castle! Awesome. Huh, is the whole castle on some swamp or mudflat area? Must have been a bitch to build back in the day. And it looks so cold...

I love the cutout knight-on-a-horse. XD

So, how was your trip around Europe?

[lyore.livejournal.com]

It's an abbey, actually. But fortified abbey, used as a stronghold in the Hundred Years War, so close enough :)

It's kinda built in the ocean - when the tide comes in it surrounds the island, apart from the causeway. Apparently, they built it there because some bishop had a dream about the Archangel Miche(a)l, which told him to build an abbey there. When they started, it was supposedly surrounded by trees, but then I think there was an earthquake or something, and the sea surrounded the island. And then they had to lug all the stone up there by boat. Must have been fun. And so ends Lyore's (probably completely inaccurate) history lesson for today :)

The knight cut-out is one of my favourites too.

The trip was GREAT. So many things to see, stuff I'd read about and never really thought I'd get a chance to see in person... it rained or was overcast the entire time I was in France, but we had 10 days of pratically perfect weather in the UK. Cloudless blue skies, the sort of weather I'd expect from summer back home, not spring in the UK.

[cloverfizz.livejournal.com]

Wow! It really is all narrow and layered!
Love the photos!

[cloverfizz.livejournal.com]

I also find all that brickwork astonishing... was it like that everywhere???

[lyore.livejournal.com]

Pretty much, yeah. You walk around through all these amazingly complex bits of architecture, and boogle at the thought that people have had to build them by hand over hundreds of years. And everything is so close and packed in. It's so completely different from home, I don't think that people who grew up in Europe can ever understand how incredible it is to walk through those streets (even the ones packed full of tourists and mechandise).

As a random side note, it amused me everytime one of the French/English dismissed something as 'modern' ('Oh, that causeway, it's modern, it's only been here for a 250 years or so. Pft'). I mean, that's the entire time our country has existed!

[cloverfizz.livejournal.com]

lol, that would be pretty amusing! I find it hard to believe something that old could be dismissed as new, cause anything we have that old is heritage listed, lol!! I guess it's just a completely different mindset depending wher eyou grow up and what you're used to. The very idea of having a castle/big cathedral church thing around form the middle ages or whenevr kind of boggles my mind.

[lyore.livejournal.com]

What's fun is walking down the street: Office building, Office building, Internationally famous landmark, Office building... just like it landed there by mistake or something, and if everyone ignores it it will go back to where it belongs :)

[cloverfizz.livejournal.com]

ROFL! That sounds strange!!! Got a photo example of that?

[lyore.livejournal.com]

Yep, but it's not on my computer yet, sorry.

[cloverfizz.livejournal.com]

lol, np, was just wondering ^__^
I like seeing all the photos, since I haven't been there! It's all very exciting.

[lyore.livejournal.com]

There's heaps more to come, don't worry!

[psuedoskribe.livejournal.com]

Great pictures -- whoever took these has a good eye! I don't know if it was you or kasneeze, but the landscape speaks for itself; superb.

Looking forward to more!

[lyore.livejournal.com]

*Bows* These are all mine - I haven't gotten around to swapping pics with kasneeze yet.

[amethyste5.livejournal.com]

So beautiful! I love it, someday I hope to see it in person, but until then your pictures will suffice!

[lotusflower85.livejournal.com]

Fantastic pics! Just gorgeous.