Villages Hotel Le Havre Harfleur

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.

... wondering how he would get on ... 27.09.09 Went to Bayeux hoping to stay but the Aire was closed so, after seeing the Tapestry went back to V-B for the night. The 70 metre long tapestry was not as I had imagined it, being only some 18 inches deep. We were handed a device each which gave us a commentary as we walked along. The embroiderers had thoughtfully numbered each scene so it made following the commentary quite easy though at quite a brisk pace. After seeing the ...

... 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

... next to the church. As the city was in the mist of a non-working holiday, the flea market, as the only show in town, was very busy. A French flea market is much the same as an American flea market with one basic exception; the language being spoken is French. This presents a small problem to the non-French speakers. And we are one of the non-French speakers. But there was no problem as long as we only shopped for items that cost ten euros or less. For anything costing more, we ...

... and then searched for internet places which were marked on a map of the town - of course all of these were shut so we finally gave up and returned to the port, only to find that it had a 'Wi-Fi' area at 'The Cruise Welcome Centre', which is pretty much all they did have. We managed to get our Travelpod and picture site updated and then returned to the ship which by now was enjoying some late sun - that raised our hopes that 'blighty might greet us with sunshine the next day!!