Postcard from Le Mont Saint-Michel

In 1999 Dorothy and I took a 25th anniversary trip to Europe. It was our first trip abroad together and, since it was our anniversary, I spent some time planning it.

Dorothy had been to Europe on her own previously, and had discovered Le Mont Saint-Michel on the Normandy coast. She had fond memories of the place, and as our anniversary approached, she suggested that it would be great to spend the anniversary at Mont Saint-Michel, toasting the spectacular high tide from a romantic balcony. I determined to try to fulfill that wish, although I didn't know how.

Eventually, I located a small 'hotel' in the village of Mont Saint-Michel, and reserved a room for the weekend of our actual anniversary. The trip was planned around that weekend. We flew into London, stayed for a few days, then took an overnight ferry to Saint Malo. A short drive took us to Mont Saint-Michel. After that, we took a high-speed train to Paris, spent a few days there, then returned to England via the Chunnel train, and flew home.

As it turned out, my hotel selection on Mont Saint-Michel was fortuitous. The hotels there are really collections of rooms scattered throughout the old medieval village at the base of the mountain. Each hotel has a main building, with reservation desk and proper restaurant, and then each maintains several of these scattered rooms in locations throughout the village. Our hotel was not the finest, but it owned just about the only room which had a large private terrace with a view of the bay and the tides.

Before the trip I actually planned how we would sit on the balcony and make a little movie, as a kind of 'visual postcard' of our trip. As it turned out, I could hardly have selected a better setting. Eventually I edited all of the trip video into a one-hour 'movie.' The excerpt below is one of the two scenes I made out of our 'balcony conversations.' The long closing zoom illustrates the location of our little terrace in relation to the village and the abbey.

The postcard video is encoded with Real Producer 8™, so you will need the latest Real Player™ to play it. Hope you enjoy it!

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