Hotel Relais Des 2 Rivieres 2m Rouen

... today - maybe a third if we can swing it....
we'll upload pics tonight...
a tout a l'heure! (see ya later)

we had two more lovely tours and another huge meal - then we were off to the Dordogne valley on Friday

i'm beginning to think that there isn't enough France to walk for the amount of food we're consuming...

... the beach for a sunburn! For the first 2 months of traveling, Brian asked daily to go and sit on a beach and roast. Finally his waiting is over!

Spent the afternoon doing laundry (strange, in France they won’t supply you with toilet paper in the bathroom, but they’ll give you soap with your laundry - LOL). Also explored what we could see of the Cliffside ...

... what it was about 7 o’clock that brought such merry music? Clearly the bell-ringer had decided that this was the time everyone needed to be waking! It’s the little things like this that really make me smile. I know in the places I’ve lived in Canada this would never happen. Maybe a clock tower can chime out during the day, but not at night. I know some old churches that have to fight city by-laws just to ring their bells on Sunday ...

This marathon has a different theme every year. This one was "Ciricus" We dressed as Scottish Clowns and ran with 9000 crazy people dressed up like mardi gras running 26.2 miles (42KM) and hitting 22 wine stops along the way. We drank between 1.5 and 2 bottles ...

... across from the Law Courts building and its colorful gardens, I was off for another ½ day of driving to reach Bayeux, my base for exploring Normandy. But before I headed north to the coast, a stop in one last famous beverage-producing town was warranted, as Cognac was only 30 minutes from Saintes. Driving along small country roads past fields of grapes and other crops, I had arrived at Cognac. Even though I hadn’t saved time in my schedule to tour any of the ...

... space between the wheelie bins and the no parking signs beside the captinerie

We'd been on the road four hours instead of 40 minutes and covered 250km.
There are definite lessons to be learned from this:
1. Do not bother if you have a lazy lunchtime chat first and can't hope to arrive before 2 or 3pm.
2. Plan at least three sites first, especially in a barge on wheels, as you might not squeeze into the first couple of aires you find.

... the name implies everyone else on the road will fall asleep when such a dull, average car drives by.  It certainly fits everything in the trunk that took up an entire room of our apartment, which seems to me to be some neat type of witchcraft.  

We got the car packed up and made the ferry and hotel reservations as we ate some of the leftovers from Thursday (mmm... Mexican) and left by 2pm.  The trip from London to Dover was supposed to take one hour and 45 ...

... moments that you realize hand gestures and facial expressions are not always internationally recognized. Imagine it. It's funny, right? We're starting to realize some of the finer differences between the US and France, because at this point in our travels, some of our essential products have become depleted. For instance, we were both surprised that the only kinds of deodorant you can get here are either liquid roll-on or aerosol spray. And ...

... we stayed at a camp site with a swimming pool as it was so hot however the boys were slightly put off when they were told that it was French law that board shorts were not to be worn in swimming pools! Small nut huggers are the go over here and we saw some 'interesting' sights! The next morning we checked out a French Chateaux and went to Le Clos Luce, Leonardo Divinci's home for the last three years of his life.. was worth the visit, they had working models of some of ...

... and encouraged me to check out huge stacks from the library. Her lectures opened to me the wonderful worlds of British and American literature. On this trip I was able to return the favor and share some of my zeal for the great French authors. Things were going too smoothly, we hadn't been lost and the cab had shown up. So, when we went to catch our train we were due for a snafu. SNCF came through and put us on a train that was way over booked. Before I ...