Le Monaco 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.

... The gear box was in need of some TLC. Kim came back to find me covered in grease and waste deep in Scooby. I am certainly learning my way around a car engine.
A quick pit stop via McDonalds for free internet to upload our blog and photos and then onto Ouistreham code name Sword Beach - the first of the D-Day beaches.

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.

... two workmen - the customers were mainly workers - had helped themselves to what looked like a 2 litre jug of red, dispensed from a multi-gallon wine box affair at the end of the room. After another visit or two to the starters bar (we could go as many times as we wished) our main courses arrived, three of us having steak and chips and John thin-sliced pork in a mustard sauce. A truly memorable meal for an incredibly low 10.50eu per head. Oh to live in that village ...

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

... It was a short row of concrete stalls that had counters on the front and were open to the rear of the stalls. This is an area that the local fisherman would bring their catches of the day and sell them to the local residents of the city. It was like a fishermen's fish market instead of a farmer's produce market. Just across the street from the fishermen's market was the start of the harbor. This section was full of medium sized fishing boats and lots of fishing nets stacked and ...

... and garbage that I had put into the different squares, having thought wonderful things about France's effort to promote recycling. Can that hunk of plastic really be a dishwasher? I don't even want to think about how to run that thing. Doing so, I'm told, knocks out all your hot water for the day and being that it's going to be 49 degrees in the morning, there is no way that I'd risk that. Speaking of showers (I know, I always end up back ...