Incredible Island Monastery! (Mont Saint-Michel)

We are pretty much alone here. No one is here. Absolutely no one. It's unbelievable. We are just the whole park for ourselves. Hi, I'm Lavi and this is Olli. Over the past four years we have been on some epic adventures around the world. Now, after converting an old van into our new home on wheels, we are ready to hit the road and explore the wonders of Europe. Click the subscribe button to follow our journey and let the adventure begin. We woke up today. It's 7 in the morning, the sun has just risen and we are heading today to Mont Saint-Michel. So we're just having our breakfast now and a coffee and then we've got about an hour's drive until we get there. For those of you who don't know, Mont Saint-Michel is this small tidal island just off the coast of Normandy and they've actually built the whole thing into one big island monastery. We've only seen pictures so far but it looks really really beautiful. So we thought we would wake up early and hit the road, get over there and go and check it out. When we eat breakfast in the van, we can't sit together. Just have one seat in the back and one seat here. I just realized that in English it's actually called Saint Michael's Mount but in French Mont Saint-Michel. So there you go. Yesterday we found this amazing place here. The place has everything. It's like there's a shower and we have a little lake close by where you can just walk around. You can swim in the lake which is really amazing. Then there's a little forest as well. You have probably 30 spots here to park up your mobile home, camper van. You can pitch up tents. It's really amazing. It's absolutely incredible and this is all for free. So you can just find the place and then chill out here with your family, with your friends or just come by here and sleep for a night. It's absolutely incredible. I'm so impressed really. It's so cool. Another really cool thing about these airs are that they have most of the time recycling. So I sent Oli off to do our recycling. Oh my god, we can see it. It's like this huge towering thing in the distance. Yeah, it's unbelievable. It's huge. It's just like it looks so out of place. It looks absolutely incredible. It looks surreal. We're nearly at the car park. Let's check the car park out. See how busy it is. If it's busy or not, we'll see. Yeah, we've arrived here quite early. It's just before nine. Yeah, just before nine o'clock. So hopefully we'll have beaten some people here. Awesome. Let's check it out. All right. Wow. It's just there. Can you see? It's so impressive. Oh my god. It looks like a painting right in front of you. Wow. I mean, it's already nice from here. And normally this is visited by more than three million people a year. But as you can see, it's pretty much the perfect time to come because there are not three million people here. It's practically empty. So if you want to visit St. Michael's Mound, it's now. The time is now. Because you can see we are pretty much alone here. No one is here. Absolutely no one. It's unbelievable. We are just the whole park for ourselves like at the moment. It's really incredible. St. Michael's Mound, UNESCO World Heritage Site. And you can see why. It is absolutely spectacular. Just sitting there on this small island rising out of the ocean. Just wow. Amazing. There has been a monastery on this site since the 8th century. And even to this day, there's still a population of 30 people living here, which is an absolutely amazing place to live. Could you imagine? Wow. OK, so we're coming up to the mount now. And look how big it is up close. It's incredible. It's just like completely amalgamated into the island. So it's just half island, half monastery. And it's standing there since 1,300 years. What to mask obligatoire. So, all right. Nice. All right, in we go. Oh, it's so incredibly beautiful inside here. Yeah, it feels like it's a city. You have like a hotel, your restroom. You have little shops where you can exchange. Wow, look at this. Look at this street. Oh my God. Wow, this place looks like it's been frozen in time. These streets are so ancient looking. So we're coming now to the upper part of the mount. Yeah, it keeps going up and up. You have to be reasonably fit to visit here, because as you can imagine, the whole place is just a massive hill. So we passed our vaccination security check and now we're heading up into the main abbey. But I think we have to buy some tickets because so far we haven't bought any tickets. So we're just going to go up and see what they say. Okay, so we've bought some tickets and we've picked up our little audio guide in anglais. So that we can understand a bit more about this place. So the ticket was €11 and the audio guide was €3. Merci. Bonne visite. Merci. Okay, should we press it? So we're up at the top now and the view from here is incredible. And so right behind us is the monastery, which is built at the top of this hill. Yeah, that's quite an undertaking to build that in the medieval times, out here on this rock in the middle of the ocean. Respect to those guys and their faith of building that. So now we're up at the west terrace and here you have amazing panoramic views of the bay. Quite a view they have up here. And then just behind us is the monastery itself, which we're about to go inside. They actually got the stone to build this whole place from an island which was about 35 kilometers this way. Another granite island. So they took the stone from there to build everything around that we see. But it's not just a monastery here, it's also a fortress and it's withstood many attacks over the centuries, including surviving the whole hundred years war. Okay, so we are inside the abbey now. It is really, really impressive. Really beautiful. Huge holy place out here on this rock off the coast of France. We're down in the crypt in the dungeons of Mont Saint-Michel. It's like a labyrinth in here. I don't know how much you can see. It's just endless passageways and staircases and small chapels. Now apparently as well, this whole place was used as a prison for a long time. And this wheel was how they got up all the goods that they needed. And apparently there was like six prisoners that would stand inside the wheel and walk. And then they would lift up from the front over here. Absolutely incredible. Absolutely incredible. Just imagine being one of the prisoners in this wheel. Crazy. You always want to go like where you can't go. Nice. We're going now into the underground. Yeah, we're taking the tube now. Back into the 21st century. It's like we had become medieval and we were totally into it. And then you go through this door and suddenly you're in the gift shop. And it's like, oh, okay. I remember. We're not monks. We're actually tourists. Now we're on our way out. We thought we would come out here for one last panoramic look around before we head back down. Yes. And it is a crazy view from all sides. This place, look at this place. It's really impressive from all angles, from all sides. That is a UNESCO world heritage site for sure. This is the holy seagull. Time for us now to head out. Goodbye. Bye bye. Goodbye Mont Saint-Michel. I will miss you. You're a really special place. Okay, so we're going to take the shuttle bus back to the car park and say goodbye to Mont Saint-Michel. Yes. That was an absolutely amazing place to visit. Absolutely. We loved it. We loved it so much. So, so much. Awesome. Okay. We are back in the van and we are headed north up the coast. Yeah. Let's see what we can find there. Yeah. And it started to rain like crazy now. Yeah. It's a good thing that we finished up when we did. Yeah. We're pretty much just going to be driving through the rain for the next number of hours. Yeah. But it's a good opportunity. We can make some distance north and yeah, get to our next spot. If you enjoyed watching this video, you would help us a lot by subscribing to the channel by clicking here. Thanks so much for watching guys. We will see you next time.