Day 4 - Paris to Normandy

Jo was up at 4:30am again and I managed to sleep until probably 7am. She has vowed to stay up until ten and sleep until 6 anyway, so we'll see how she does. The morning had broke overcast, and by the time we had fetched our morning repast and started our laundry at the laundromat it had started raining very lightly. We were out on the road after laundry and before lunch.

Heading out of Paris, I got to have my thrill by deliberately heading down the Champs Elysee towards the biggest traffic circle in Europe - around the Arc de Triomphe. I managed to get through it and made my exit in the first try!! It was pretty exhliirating, 9 lanes of traffic, NO LINES!! Cars and transport trucks entering and exiting 2 wide into the fray. Everyone was accelerating, noone was braking!

We then hit the Peripherique which circles the city and made our exit to Rouen which s pretty much due west of Paris by about 150kms or so. The speed limit gets up to about 130km/h so we made some good time. After Rouen, we got off he super slab and got onto a nice twisty road that followed the Seine through what they call the Valley of the Abbeys. This is a secondary (not very busy) road that has a few small towns and magnificent churches from the 12th century.

We stopped and went inside a few of the churches and enjoyed them as much or more than the Notre Dame in Paris. We would go into the cathedral and we were the only ones I there, it was great and I even took a few pictures inside the one church.

We also stopped for lunch at this little café, and decided we would try the daily special. It turns out there was two so we choose 1 of each although we really had no idea what we were ordering. It turned out Joanna got this awesome ham plate with a delicious salad, and I got ground steak grilled and topped with butter and herbs with "frites" (yes fries). And it came with a 1/2 litre of Sauvignon Blanc for 26EURO c'est tout! We weren't in Paris any more, prices were now half, and we were in for a treat when it came to the night's lodgings.


At Lillebon we stopped to see the ruins from a Roman theatre
and went up to this old Chateau (which is pretty much a small castle). It was a bumpy little road leading up there, and to our surprise the place was deserted. We toured around the place taking photos, it was so cool. The place was in between total ruins and fixer upper status and the doors were wide open. Noone around - bizarre. I think it was the Chateau Tancarville, I can't wait to do some internet research on the place. It looks like some of it has been blown to bits and other walls are pock marked from gunfire.


(remember you can click on a picture to enlarge it)

After getting back onto the highway we arriving at Caen, a town pretty much completely destroyed during WWII and since has been completely rebuilt. We didn't stop at Caen, but I missed my turn off the peripherique road that would have lead us towards Juno Beach. There is a Canadian war museum there we want to see. The saying goes, "the adventure begins when things stop going as planned" Not that we had anything planned, in fact as I was arriving in Caen Jo was having a lil nap so I grabbed the map and decided Mt. St. Michel (our original destination of the day) was too far and we need a closer goal as it was already 6:00 or so.

Juno Beach is just 20 or 30 kms from here as the crow flies I thought. But missing the exit and taking a later one meant I had to traverse ill marked back country roads through tiny villages of stone walls, single lane wide roads until I had got sufficiently close and our dinner bell had gone off. I told Jo, next little village that has an Auberge, we're stopping. 90 seconds later we were stopped at the most unsuspected, amazing little place in a town called Thaon. It's not even on our map.

"Bon Soir Monsieur!", she calls down from the 2nd floor window as I walk up to the stone building.
"Bon soir! Avez-vous une chambre pour ce soir?"
"Oui, un moment"

So I got us checked into this place that inside is beautiful and must have been recently redone in the last 2 years because it was just like new. It cost 1/3 what we paid in Paris (although you can't see the Eiffel Tower from here.) I bombed into a little nearby town called Creully "pr. Cree uhLee" and found a grocer for some bread, cheese, grapes, cured ham, and cold bevvies of course. There were posters up in town advertising the Canadian Museum at Juno Beach - which I thought was pretty cool. I know tomorrow will be a sad and proud to be Canadian sort of day. We'll go up to Omaha beach as well I'm sure.

Back at the room, dumb and dumber tried in vain to figure out the telephone to call the kids. Well, let's just say after 2 or three calls to the same woman somewhere in France - she was getting a little pissed with us. We found found the magic combination of numbers and the call connected. It was good to hear from the kids, we both miss them very much and talk about them during the day, especially when we see other kids.

Tomorrow the adventure continues up to the beaches of Normandy, down to the castle at Mt. St. Michel and finally to the Loire Vallet (which is like Napa valley with more super-old castles I hear. I think the Loire is a pretty optimistic goal for tomorrow, but the key to happy traveling seems to be having the flexibility to change your plans as you go.