Arriving in France
This is the beginning of my travelogue or our recent trip to france. I am back dating it to the actual days things happened. If you aren't interested, don't go past the cut.
Our 2 week trip to France began in earnest today. Deanna and I left from Kansas City yesterday, flew to Chicago, and then had an overnight flight to Paris. Clearing passport control and customs was a breeze. The lines weren't too long and customs was a pair of empty desks we walked past. We followed the frequent enough signs to the train station at the airport where we met up with our traveling companions Wayne and Deb, friends from Wichita. They too had had a relatively uneventful flight, although passport control had taken them a while longer. I guess their flight came in at a busier time and place than ours did.
After a brief altercation with an automated ticket machine, we had our tickets on the local train(s) to get to the real train station for our trip to Caen. After long trans-Atlantic flights, wrestling our bags through the Paris metro was a bit trying, but pretty straight forward. Once we were ensconced on our train to Caen we were able to nap. There wasn't a lot else to do, since most of the time the train was either in a ditch or surrounded by trees and brush. Something about the locals not wanting to hear the train going by all the time, I imagine. Pretty shallow of them to not take our needs into account. Caen was the first stop, so off we went to pick up our rental car.
We had to search around a bit for the car rental place, because the online address was no longer correct. I don't know how long ago it moved, but there was a had written sign (that appeared kind of old) taped in the window of the old address explaining (in English) how to get to the new place. It was just around the corner and easy to find.
One of the discussions we had been having was whether the car we had reserved would be big enough for all our luggage (enough for 4 people for 2 weeks) and whether or not we needed a GPS (which we had not reserved). By the time we got to the rental agency we had decided yes to the GPS and probably to the bigger car. When the guy behind the counter (who spoke excellent English and cracked jokes with us the whole time) saw our mound of luggage, he suggested we get a larger car before we could bring it up. And after I said we wanted to add a GPS he said a GPS was 19 euro per day, and they had a slightly larger car that would hold all our luggage (just barely, as it turned out) with a built in GPS for 25 euro. We elected to do that, and after he and I spent some time going over the car controls (and setting the GPS to English), we were on our way to Bayeux where we would be spending the next couple of nights.
De was in charge of getting addresses into the GPS, and it proved to be simple enough albeit tedious with the limited interface available. We followed the directions straight to our B&B in Bayeux without any problems.
The B&B was mere blocks from the center of town where both the tapestry museum and cathedral are located. After picking our rooms (Deb picked the one upstairs with the head knocking ceilings, really) we headed off into the cool rain to see the sights. We spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around Bayeux taking pictures and ducking in out of the rain squalls. We decided an early dinner and bed were in order.
Our landlady (a transplanted Parisian who was a gracious hostess and a hoot) had recommended a restaurant called Marsala that was just on the other side of the cathedral, and while we were probably too tired to totally appreciate it, it was quite good. The ladies both got pizzas which they liked, while Wayne and I had one of the fixed menus. We started with cidre mixed with Kir (a black current liquor) accompanying a salmon spread on toast points. I then had the seafood and fish soup while he had the meat pate. For the main course I had the Chicken Normandie (in a cream & apple cider sauce) while Wayne had pork tenderloins in a cidre sauce. Dessert consisted of an apple tort for Wayne and a creme of caramel for me (both of which we were forced to share).
The way it was explained to us is that cider is non-alcoholic, while cidre contains alcohol, sometimes up to 5%.
As we worked our way back toward the B&B, we bought a new French SIM card for our european cell phone. Tomorrow we'll see if we can get it to work.
The saga continues here.
Our 2 week trip to France began in earnest today. Deanna and I left from Kansas City yesterday, flew to Chicago, and then had an overnight flight to Paris. Clearing passport control and customs was a breeze. The lines weren't too long and customs was a pair of empty desks we walked past. We followed the frequent enough signs to the train station at the airport where we met up with our traveling companions Wayne and Deb, friends from Wichita. They too had had a relatively uneventful flight, although passport control had taken them a while longer. I guess their flight came in at a busier time and place than ours did.
After a brief altercation with an automated ticket machine, we had our tickets on the local train(s) to get to the real train station for our trip to Caen. After long trans-Atlantic flights, wrestling our bags through the Paris metro was a bit trying, but pretty straight forward. Once we were ensconced on our train to Caen we were able to nap. There wasn't a lot else to do, since most of the time the train was either in a ditch or surrounded by trees and brush. Something about the locals not wanting to hear the train going by all the time, I imagine. Pretty shallow of them to not take our needs into account. Caen was the first stop, so off we went to pick up our rental car.
We had to search around a bit for the car rental place, because the online address was no longer correct. I don't know how long ago it moved, but there was a had written sign (that appeared kind of old) taped in the window of the old address explaining (in English) how to get to the new place. It was just around the corner and easy to find.
One of the discussions we had been having was whether the car we had reserved would be big enough for all our luggage (enough for 4 people for 2 weeks) and whether or not we needed a GPS (which we had not reserved). By the time we got to the rental agency we had decided yes to the GPS and probably to the bigger car. When the guy behind the counter (who spoke excellent English and cracked jokes with us the whole time) saw our mound of luggage, he suggested we get a larger car before we could bring it up. And after I said we wanted to add a GPS he said a GPS was 19 euro per day, and they had a slightly larger car that would hold all our luggage (just barely, as it turned out) with a built in GPS for 25 euro. We elected to do that, and after he and I spent some time going over the car controls (and setting the GPS to English), we were on our way to Bayeux where we would be spending the next couple of nights.
De was in charge of getting addresses into the GPS, and it proved to be simple enough albeit tedious with the limited interface available. We followed the directions straight to our B&B in Bayeux without any problems.
The B&B was mere blocks from the center of town where both the tapestry museum and cathedral are located. After picking our rooms (Deb picked the one upstairs with the head knocking ceilings, really) we headed off into the cool rain to see the sights. We spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around Bayeux taking pictures and ducking in out of the rain squalls. We decided an early dinner and bed were in order.
Our landlady (a transplanted Parisian who was a gracious hostess and a hoot) had recommended a restaurant called Marsala that was just on the other side of the cathedral, and while we were probably too tired to totally appreciate it, it was quite good. The ladies both got pizzas which they liked, while Wayne and I had one of the fixed menus. We started with cidre mixed with Kir (a black current liquor) accompanying a salmon spread on toast points. I then had the seafood and fish soup while he had the meat pate. For the main course I had the Chicken Normandie (in a cream & apple cider sauce) while Wayne had pork tenderloins in a cidre sauce. Dessert consisted of an apple tort for Wayne and a creme of caramel for me (both of which we were forced to share).
The way it was explained to us is that cider is non-alcoholic, while cidre contains alcohol, sometimes up to 5%.
As we worked our way back toward the B&B, we bought a new French SIM card for our european cell phone. Tomorrow we'll see if we can get it to work.
The saga continues here.