Antares Honfleur

Arrived at Ouistreham just before dark and found an Aire de Service right on the beach and this time it was free! The downside was it was right next to the ferry terminal and the 6am ferry to Portmouth the next day was kill the tranquilo the next morning. Kim's Maison du Scooby cooked up a storm. Pork fajitas on rice - delicious. I gave it 5 stars.

From Rouen we drove to Honfleur, which is a tiny harbour town on the Normandy coast. So so cute!!!! We wandered around checking out the wee boutique shops and eating galeti - yum! Nothing for dinner and as it was Sunday only one little grocery shop was open with not much selection so we opted for a fillet of freshly caught ...

Onwards to Etretat for our first overnight stay in an Aires de service. These are overnight parking areas for campers and moterhomes and supply fresh water, electricity and waste dumping facilities. All at a rock bottom price. This one was 5 Euro for the parking a and extra 2 euro for the water and electirc hookup.
Town has spectacular cliffs beautiful old building full of character.

... by works car parks and on the other by a busy road hence a noisy night and not much sleep. Went round the museum - mainly nautical - and though it had the edge on ****-pots it wasn't particularly interesting. French museums in our experience tend to be a touch boring. I got ripped-off - I felt - at an internet cafe where I was charged 7.50eu for two coffees and half an hour on a computer which wouldn't accept my memory-stick. 18.09.09 Saint Brice-En-Cogles N48.24'40" W1 ...

Drove about an hour to really cute seaside town with fab cliffs. One looks like an elephants nose tucking into some water (not my likeness). Kinda reminded me a bit of Jason with his first pint of the day…..Found a hotel here, and I broke one of my only 2 requirements on the trip by day 3. We took a room in a cute small hotel without a private bathroom. Granted, all the ones with private bathrooms ...

We started this morning planning to visit Honfleur and spend a couple of days here as it is so beautiful. But today it rains, so today it loses!
As the battery is flat too, we simply cast off and drove south west.
On the way out of Cite Europe where we took on some diesel we say a couple of hitchers, and as we were feeling in good spirits we picked them up.
They were quite chatty but after a while we were ...

TomTom is great, expect when you don't have the maps for the country you're in!
We have the full european DVD but loading all the maps onto the phone was one item that did not make it onto my big list of jobs to do before we left.
I still have the DVD with my but no DVD drive!
We have been navigating with googlemaps since ...

The first night was spent in a nice stop on the edge of the old port in Calais.
I've been here before when i did some sailing in my youth so i know it well.
It seemed safe enough as there must have been 50 motorhomes but there was a broken window overnight for someone!
We moved onto honfleur and found a nice stop 2Km from honfleur which was free and had a large football/basketball court for jake to play in

... and London. Staying in a cheap, slightly depressing airport hotel, offering internet at 15 Euro per half hour and an "Americaine Breakfast" it was time for Simon and I to say goodbye. Me moving on to India (where my mom was coming to visit!), Simon on to deeper pockets of Europe and then Los Angeles to visit his brother. A sad goodbye, but with the comfort of knowing we'd see each other again in Australia in July, our journeys continued on...

... pretty good even though they were served cold. Too much work to get them out of the shells, so we gave up in the middle of the dinner and were still kind of hungry after we were done... We decided to walk around the hotel after dark. There was no one around, so we ...