May 8, 2013 - Honfleur

We thought we were on top of this time zone business. But when we left Falmouth, England to go to Le Havre, France we lost another hour. That wouldn’t be so silly if we weren’t going back to England again tomorrow to stop in Dover and get that hour back. Then on to Rotterdam and the hour will disappear once more. With each changing time zone we are also changing money - euros to pounds to euros to pounds to euros. It would be easy for an old person to get confused. At least today we were driving on the right side of the road once...

May 20, 2011 - Le Havre, France and on to Paris

We skipped Le Havre for a bus tour to Paris that gave us 3 1/2 hours on our own after a city tour. The bus ride to Paris was long, over 2 hours. The man in front of us was coughing, but we couldn’t move. Will Richard get sick? (Yes he did) Our guide was good and the driver was good but he didn't speak English. After stopping at a rest stop for a pee break the air conditioning in the bus stopped working. Paris is congested. We drove down the Champs Elysee, saw the Arc de Triomphe, all the fashion stores, the Louvre, the Pantheon, Notre...

Jun 9, 2008 - Le Havre & Rouen, France

Bonjour! We made it back to France this morning after two days at sea. It was very nice and relaxing, having almost nothing we had to do, and all day to do it. We spent A lot of time trying to find our way to the next trivia game or demo and of course, wine tasting – they do a really good job of it here. Saturday was really pretty choppy; the ship was going up & down when we were in the Atlantic. Once we hit the Bay of Biscay things settled down. Kit almost won another cruise playing BINGO, but just missed it by just one #. Sunday night was...

Dec 20, 2006 - Cruising La Manche

Well, here we are. Back in Manchester after a weekend's Mini-Cruise aboard the Black Watch, with our good friends Julia and Moira from SCC. Very special thanks to Mr Olsen and his crew for making us so welcome, feeding us so well, keeping us extremely well oiled ( check the movie ) and entertaining us so royally. After the appalling weather of the last few weeks here in England, it was such a pleasure to find not a drop of rain for the entire trip. Having set sail from Southampton on Saturday evening and dancing the night away in the ship's...

Oct 3, 2006 - Honfleur

Honfleur is a popular day trip from Paris, although it seemed it was also popular with motorhomes. There is a free camp set up for 120 motorhomes! Although it was only half full, this was a huge number of campers in a small seaside town at this time of the year. Rather than Aussies & Kiwis on summer trips, we're now seeing none of them & instead seeing all the Brits on their way down to Portugal & southern Spain for the winter months. Can see why they're keen to leave this weather behind! Anyway, Honfleur is a rather attractive town set...

Jul 19, 2006 - Caen, France

Caen is the capitol of Normandy, France, and a good home base for seeing the D-day beaches. Turns out its a nice town in itself with a 1000 year history stretching back to William the Bastard(who bacame the Conquerer) as well as Jeanne d'Arc. We only spent a few hours in Caen the evening we got there. We had a great hotel right across from the train station and beside the bus station for the busses to the beaches. Kiyomi studied so much military history that she had to see at least one battlefield in Europe, so we went to Juno beach and...

May 14, 2006 - le havre, normandy

hello from normandy the land of weird keyboards where i can not find the period button another adventurous day i arrived at the port of le havre the capital of normandy, it cost only 10 pounds, but the guy at the travel stqtion in london who booked my ticket picked the wrong day Josh, now i know how you felt anyways, i paid tzice and got to le havre on the ferry i met this girl who had to kill time so we hung out, however we found out le havre is a sketchy place we were looking for the bus station when we asked some guy where it is, and he...

May 7, 2006 - Caen Market

Did you know that Caen, France is one hour ahead of Portsmouth, England? Neither did we...so, needless to say, we didn't quite get as much sleep as planned. At 5:30 AM, according to our watches, the ship's wake up call came through our cabin's loud speaker, and we thought surely there must be some mistake. Much to our chagrin, it was no mistake - local time was 6:30 and we were to disembark at 7:15! So, we proceeded to get up and get ready as best we could in our half sleepy state, when in the middle of it all, an announcement was made that...

Jun 26, 2005 - Voyage au pays d'auge

After a day of rest and relaxation and an amazing dinner at Authuille, Alison, Brendan Paul, Alison and I headed out to Normandie on Friday the 24th to visit Honfleur and the pays d'Auge. We drove down there, an uneventful trip. Got into the appartment that we had rented and headed to the beach. After a game of rocky/sandy (think of it as horse shoes played with rocks on the beach) and a dip in the ocean we headed back to the apartement only to discover that we had lost our keys somewhere on the beach. I know! We headed back to find them...

Jun 10, 2005 - Le Harve

Today we are in Le Harve France. The tour started after we left the ship late for someone unknown reason. We could have cleared customs late or some other reason, but we were to first meet the tour at 7:45am. Last night the ship paper listed the time as 8:00am. We had time for breakfast and then a quick check of the email to see if there was any news on Coqui. She had been having problems with her back legs. The email was there and said she was in better shape with a different medication. The original medication, prednisone, seemed to make...

Apr 28, 2005 - Houlgate - Normandy (D-Day Beaches)

Stopped in Houlgate, just below the town of Le Harve on the French North Coast, was a good place to see the D-Day beaches from. Had a little trouble with 'Pikey', a sign of things to come....not starting to well, but got going in the morning, think it was a little to much to drink the night before, we discovered she had a bit of a drinking and heavy smoking problem soon after hitting France.