Hotel Britania Le Havre

... steep to get down to the shore, it’s hard to imagine how difficult the soldiers had it. Seeing the sight at Omaha Beach really made me feel proud to be an American. After the beach, we drove onward to Saint-Malo, which is on the coast, and is a walled city. We stayed at a cute little hotel, similar to a B&B and had dinner at a nice restaurant, too bad I ordered my steak too rare…

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.

... to our van in the early hours of next morning. one remarkable sight that had even the French reaching for their cameras - twentysix storks which flewover several times, getting ready for their flight to Africa. 24.08.09 Echillais N45.53.847' W0.57.335' 25.08.09 Saint Pompain N46.26'33.5" W0.35'56.7" A lovely French Passion owned by a 'Camping-Cariste'. We had thought that C-Cs were camping car suppliers but no - they too have motor homes and have enough land to ...

... and not wanting to feed five of us, we regretted the company as we did not want to stop.
We dropped them off at the entrace to another motorway and wished them on their way. We promptly stopped for lunch and a coffee!
Another experience ticked off our list at least.
As things were going well we carried onto through to Noirmoutier to our latest "Aires" in the centre of Noirmoutier at 7 euros per night

... which works to a point but when you're paying two pound per Mb it get expensive. In the great scheme of things its not much when your running a 7 ton bus but its still stupid and it does not re-route if (when)you take a good turning.
On the way to Noirmoutier, it attempted to take us over the "alternative" crossing at high tide!!

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

... not be able to sign the amount with our fingers. It is interesting negotiating a price with just your fingers to change the price either up or down. And when Harriet purchased a little jewelry box for less than one euro we had to resort to showing each other the proper amount of money. She was successful and is now the proud owner of a little jewelry box. We worked our way around flea market and saw many little items that would be a great bargain and wonderful to own, but ...

I examined the dishwasher situation tonight so figure out how it can be that a big plastic box could actually clean my dishes. After pulling out the handbook and the handy packets of soap that were given to us upon arrival, I read the instructions about how to load it and which buttons to press. Buttons? I looked closer and saw that there were no buttons. But hey, I'm determined to figured this thing out. I ...