Le Fer a Cheval Hotel Trouville

... 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.

... and of course washed down with a few glasses of rose!

Next morning we went for a run through the village and along the beach. It was a glorious morning! Afterwards Kim went to have another potter through the village, take some photos and buy groceries while I was able to have my long awaited fiddle with Scooby ...

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.

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

... time). They also offer guided tours of the beach and a bunker out front.

We went out and looked at the bunker, the beach and then read more of the signage along the walkway. Hot and tired we head out to find the Canadian Cemetery just out of town.

It is an impressive cemetery with 2,043 graves. Most of the men buried in the cemetery belonged to the Canadian 3rd Division. It has flowers between ...

... chains used to secure down jeeps in the gliders, melted shell casings for the plaques, and concrete for the main cross. This is the only cemetery to contain two crosses. We also visited the grave of the only soldier who was buried with his dog. Only 3 dogs were brought in on D-Day. There were also many Germans buried here. Once again, on the graves were many touching personal comments on the headstones something that are not on the American ...

... or something that has a village on it. Pretty surreal when you first spot it, but there were lots of tourists there plugging up the narrow alleyways and little tourist **** shops. Other than that it was nice and you could escape it all pretty easily by climbing a few steps. We had to leave by 9 to catch the train and got back to the tent at about 12 am. All in all Normandy is a beautiful place and has an amazing but sad history. See you all very soon!!