Oct 5, 2007 - Giverny: the Claude Monet gardens

Today we woke up ESPECIALLY early, as we were catching the train to Giverny, 45 minutes outside of Paris. Giverny is where Claude Monet called home the last 30 years of his life, and where he found most of his inspiration for his paintings in his gardens, arbors, and lily pond. Not knowing exactly where we needed to be, it finally took us 3 metro connections to get to the Gare St. Lazare train station. Arriving 45 minutes prior to our expected departure we purchased our tickets and waited patiently for our platform to be announced. We had...

Aug 13, 2007 - Giverny and Paris once more

I am back in Paris after what seems like a whirlwind tour of Northern France. It's hard to believe that tomorrow the tour will be over, it went so fast. My last night in Bayeux I went to dinner with the guide William and Xavier the bus driver. We spent a lot of time together on this tour and all got along well. Even though it was a great group of people, its nice to go out alone on our free nights and get away from them for an evening. We ate at a restuarant that William wanted to check out for future tours and it was great. The night...

Jun 18, 2007 - Detour to Etretat

While driving on my way to Mont St. Michel I saw roadsign for Etretat. I figured I had some time and it was nearing supper so I would stop by. Étretat is best known for its cliffs, including a famous natural arch. These cliffs and the associated resort beach attracted artists including Eugène Boudin, Gustave Courbet and Claude Monet. Two of the three famous arches seen from the town are the Porte d'Aval, and the Porte d'Amont. The Manneporte is the third which can not be seen from the town.

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...

Aug 3, 2006 - Dieppe

The Dieppe raid as you may all remember from your Canadian history books took place in a little coastal town in the north of France called Dieppe. Rightfully so. We pulled into this town pretty exhausted after a hard days travel, and a few hard days touring as well to find out the only youth hostel in town has closed down. We wondered around aimlessly for a while till we stumbled onto a really cheap hotel and decided to set down for the night. Not a bad place at all really. We put in our hour tour to be good Canadians but we were so...

Jul 31, 2006 - Arras, Vimy Ridge

Vimy Ridge was the ground on which the modern Canada that we know today was sort of born out of. This single pivotal battle of the First World War was the largest unifying moment of Canadian history since the completion of the national railway. For the first time in Canadian history all 4 divisions of our army fought as one under a Canadian General leading a strictly Canadian assault against Germany. In a war that over the years was fought over a matter of yards the Canadian assault breached kilometers into a key strategic portion of the...

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...

Jul 17, 2006 - Rouen - July 16th

Rouen - July 16th Slept until around noon. Got ourselves together and head out to explore the city. It is Sunday and seems deserted and full of trash. Must be because it is Sunday on a holiday weekend? Had an odd feeling that I was not safe, but not really unsafe. Sketchy characters all over the place. The city should really be called the city of Cathedrals - there are mini Notre Dames everywhere. A complete gothic style city. Really beautiful despite the odd folk. We have a nice dinner of excellent pizza and hit the hay early. We decided...

Jul 10, 2006 - France- check out the new photos!

I'm in France and boy do I love it! Yes we are driving on the right hand side of the road, we go around the round about anti clockwise, the supermarkets sure do put SUPER back into the word market, the clock in our tiny country village chimes every 15 minutes and once for every hour on the hour -i.e. 12 times at midnight and this key board is completely bonkers but that is only the beginning!!!! It is true how easy it is to travel from country to country in Europe -just four hours on the ferry from New Haven (England) to Dieppe (France) car...

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...