L'Ecrin Hotel Honfleur

... 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 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

... to the room to ready for dinner.

We walked back to town and found a nice
restaurant with a view of the harbor and sat down to our first French
meal of the trip. I had fois gras for a stater and then chicken and
apples and Sandy a Normandy salad for a starter and fried salmon for
the main and everything was very good. Welcome back to France!!!
Desert was apple tart for me and Sandy had meringue and cream sauce
and all was ...

... in contrast. It also had tons of art galleries for you to explore. We came across a small vintage car show in one of the parking lots and also shops selling local cidre. Things were looking promising for wandering in and out of little shops. In any case, it was lunch first and Trish and I found a great place in the little harbour. French oysters (saltier but fresh!), moules mariniere with a glass of wine and fresh bread finished off with a double expresso ...

... there. A slice of pizza was selling about $6. If you bought inside the restaurant, it would have cost $9! We decided to eat the baguette that we picked up before we left the little town where we are staying at. We came back to hotel around 4PM and decided to drive ...