Hotel Celtic Le Havre

... there. It was beautiful, haunting, and eerie to see the sight of where the troupes landed on D-Day. When I was in the museum, I was listening to an interactive audio recording of soldier’s experiences from D-Day, and the first button I happened to push was of a soldier from Mt. Vernon, IL! What a small world. To climb down to the actual beach part of Omaha Beach took awhile. It’s ...

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.

... and we did our own thing by walking as far as we could. Walked from where the bus dropped us off, down the Champs Elysees, walking into Renault and Toyota showrooms to see their latest concept cars. Beautiful. Went to the Arc de Triomphe and took lots of photos. From there we walked to Eiffel tower and took photos right underneath it. Didn't even try to go up because the queues were very, very long. We started to walk along the Seine towards Notre Dame but decided to ...

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

... in the Normandy. Again, the cliffs of Etretat are the sight number one for tourists. Unfortunately, we hadn't got time to climb them. The view up there most be fantastic. All we could do was to see the Alabaster Coast from the beach. After a short stop in Etretat we drove back to Le Havre, where we arrived in the early evening.

... Normandy before they committed troops. After Normandy we headed back to Caen by way of Bayeux. There in a tiny, unassuming town, we saw one of the greatest artifacts from the Middle Ages. On a back street we ducked into a library and found the exhibit of the Bayeux Tapestry, the embroidered record of William the Conqueror's conquest of Britain. All three of us marveled as we saw close-up its beauty and historical significance.