Place Jules Ferry Le Havre

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.

... descriptions from clothing to antiques. Here it was just rubbish. As in Les A the town was closed to traffic but had we been desperate to buy we couldn't have found a single thing. Not that the French weren't buying!. The aire had filled up with camping cars and people were ferrying bag after bag of junk to them. One mans'junk ..... 21.09.09 Mayenne N48.18'11" W0.36'56" No official aire here but a good spot next to the river and the Tourist Info. 22.09.09 Vire N48.50 ...

... maybe with a car with a bigger trunk though....but jason is getting better at the packing now, think he figured out the knack.....though its a good thing i packed light as we wouldn't have fit anymore in the car (and we are using up every available inch of space) since Jason's suitcase is bigger than mine! Ah well, at least he left the vampire boots behind....maybe if i'm lucky they got lost in the move.....

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

... Just off the ship is a small tourist office for Le Havre. The lady told us that train back to Rouen was at 11:00AM and the only train back that we could take was at 4:00PM. That would mean with a 55 minute train ride we would get back to the train station with just an hour before all aboard. She also said that they were expecting rain in both Le Havre and Rouen. The train schedule for Sunday is very limited and we were concerned about ...

... Bayeux and The Tapestry. Rene related to us the story of meeting the Princess and talking to her as he spoke English and few others did. He told us how friendly and down-to-earth she was. Meanwhile, Rene says, Prince Charles was quietly fuming in the background as his wife was receiving all the attention. Rene also told of how he coincidentally drove through the tunnel in Paris where Princess Diana ...