Friday 27 February 2015

Day 131: Homecoming

Up before dawn to do the final tidy and pack, and wolf down a pain au chocolat, and we were on the road by 6.15am, driving to Caen/Ouistreham in a light rain. We were at the ferry terminal less than an hour later and aboard the ferry not too long after that. We had stumped up for a cabin, and once we were inside, Kate and I stretched out on our bunks for a quick snooze – well, somewhat longer in Kate’s case. The sea wasn’t exactly smooth, but the crossing was fine and we arrived in Portsmouth a bit after 1pm.

It was a real treat to only have a 45-odd-minute drive from the ferry terminal to home, but Kate and I spent that time nursing feelings of real trepidation. We had been informed a few days ago by the agent who has been looking after our place that when he went in to check the house after the tenants had moved out, he discovered that the tap in the first floor en suite had failed and leaked water all the way down to the cellar.

Opening the front door, we were greeted by a wave of damp mustiness. The floor in the front room was still very wet and the old, old wallpaper had come away in places. It looked pretty shocking, but as we explored further it was clear that we had got off relatively lightly. The damage appears to be relatively superficial, but it’s still going to take some time to get it all repaired. And despite the downer of coming back to the mess, it’s nice to be home again.

Thursday 26 February 2015

Day 130: Cemetery and supermarket


Our little cottage is only about half and hour from the D-Day landing beaches, so this morning we drove out to Omaha Beach, one of the landing stages for the US troops. It was very cold and blowing a gale when we got there, so we stayed long enough for the girls to get an idea of what it was all about and then jumped back in the car and drove to the American war cemetery at Colleville-sur-Mer (which appeared in Saving Private Ryan). We spent some time in the small museum first, watching films and looking at the exhibits, and then walked out to the cemetery itself, where we wandered among the grave markers for a while, slightly in awe of the scale of it all.  










We then headed for the big E.Leclerc hypermarket outside Bayeux to stock up on all things French in preparation for our return to the UK tomorrow. Sadly, there was no Roche Baron cheese for Zoe, but they did have the vacuum-packed duck confit that I love so much and I found a few bottles of wine as well (although not as many as I would have liked – prices seem to have really jumped in the past year or so, and the bargains just aren’t as common). I splashed out on a bottle of 1986 Chateau Haut Bailly. Haut Bailly is one of my favourite wines and I couldn’t miss the opportunity to try a properly mature bottle like this (just don’t ask how much it cost). 

We drove back to the house through several hail flurries and passed the remains of an accident – someone obviously hadn’t recalibrated their speed for the icy road and there were a couple of banged up cars beside the road. After lunch, I began the packing process one last time. Kate and Sarah were both feeling a bit ill by now – that bug had finally caught up with them – and after dinner, Sarah threw up all over her bed. I was then up until after midnight packing, cleaning and putting the sheets out to dry. 

Tuesday 17 February 2015

Day 129: It's all white

This is getting spooky. We’re due to head back to the UK in a few days, so of course, it snowed last night. Thankfully, it wasn’t too heavy, so it should all be gone by the time we have to leave, but there was enough to make the countryside look really magical.









 


Day 128: Ill communication

We've been extremely lucky with our health so far - apart from the odd sniffle, no-one has really been sick. Until today. Zoe woke up vomiting this morning and I was feeling pretty seedy, too. She continued to throw up on a pretty regular basis for most of the day, but after a bit of a sleep in the afternoon, I felt a bit better. We’re not sure what the source of the problem is, but I suspect that it’s one of those norovirus winter vomiting bugs, which means that Kate and Sarah are probably in for a bout, too…


Day 127: All hail

This morning we drove out to the village of Tilly-sur-Seulles for its market. On the way, we passed a small war cemetery, so we stopped and had a quick walk around – but it was very cold, so it really was a quick walk around.






We walked around the market pretty quickly, too – it was rather small. One of the few stalls was manned by an old lady and her very old Labradors – her stock consisted of a couple of guinea fowl and some leeks.


To get out of the cold, we popped into the local bar/tabac, which was buzzing. Kate and the girls then queued up outside the boulangerie to buy some bread, enduring a small hail flurry as they did so, while I went up the road to buy a slab of bacon from the boucherie.


Day 126: Run, rabbit, run

In the morning we drove to the market at Bayeux – which proved to be the pick of the markets on this particular leg. It even had a stall selling live chickens and rabbits – one of which very nearly got away as it was being transferred from cage to box for a customer.
 


The girls got crepes and Kate and I had a coffee, then we picked up a rotisserie chicken, some veges, some oysters and bottle of cheap Cotes du Rhone for cooking. We looked around for bread, but didn’t like any we saw (we’re getting awfully picky about our baguettes), so we stopped off once more at our boulangerie in Balleroy on the way home.


Monday 16 February 2015

Day 125: How Lo can you go?

In the morning, we drove to the town of Saint Lo to check out its market. We didn’t stay long – just long enough to buy some duck confit – and then found a place for a quick coffee.



On the way home, we found a nice, big shiny new E.Leclerc and did some more shopping, then went home for a lunch of cheese and fresh baguette from our boulangerie in Balleroy.

Day 124: Storming Normandy

In the morning, we continued our search for somewhere to stay tonight – firing off emails to anywhere that looked acceptable. Hotel check-out time was looming when one of the owners replied and as we were so desperate, we took the place, despite some misgivings. Then, one of the other people to whom we had written wrote back to say that although the cottage we had enquired about was occupied, he had another on his books that might be suitable. It looked small and pretty basic but nicely furnished (and, crucially, it had a wood-burning stove in the living room), so we cancelled the other booking and started the process of booking the new place – waiting with increasing nervousness for the confirmation and directions to come through. Which they duly did and we headed downstairs and checked out with about half an hour to spare.

On the way there, we took a detour to find a supermarket. The E.Leclerc at which we ended up seemed rather tired (the presence of sparrows flying in and out of the aisles didn’t exactly inspire confidence), but it did have Roche Baron – we bought a whole round – and everything else we needed. It was around lunchtime by now, so we sat in the car in the rainy car park and had our traditional French on-the-hoof lunch: rosette and baguette (although Kate went off piste this time, opening up a pack of Saint Agur and smearing that over her bread).

At around 5pm, we finally arrived in the little village of Balleroy, where we grabbed some cash to pay for the cottage and some baguettes at the sweet little boulangerie. From there, it was a short drive to the tiny little hamlet of La Bazoque, where we met Stephen, who let us in to our lovely little stone cottage, where we quickly lit a fire and got settled in.

Day 123: Getting an Eiffel

Despite having made numerous trips to France – their first at nine weeks old – neither of the girls has ever really been to Paris (we took Sarah as a baby and we once drove through when we took a wrong turn on the way to Calais a few years back). This was something we felt we needed to remedy, and today was the day.

Sadly, it was a cold, grey and intermittently rainy day, but we managed to get the shuttle bus to the station and then the train into the centre of Paris without any trouble, and after a quick visit to the Arc de Triomphe, we caught the Metro to Trocadero station. It was raining a bit harder now, but we stopped outside the Théâtre National de Chaillot as there was a crowd outside, obviously awaiting the arrival of one or more notable personages. We didn’t spot anyone famous (to us anyway), but we did see several very dressed-up women arrive, all desperately trying to remain glamorous despite the wind and rain.



And then we turned the corner and came across that most famous of Paris residents, the Eiffel Tower. We walked down the steps, fending off the African trinket hawkers, crossed the Seine and walked to the base of the tower. With the Charlie Hebdo massacre not long past, there was a significant military presence around the pylons, but otherwise, it was all pretty quiet. After a bit of neck craning and general gawking, we headed off in search of somewhere to have lunch.    




Now my knowledge of Paris is much like my knowledge of London – very patchy. I know a few bits quite well, but I don’t really know how they all connect up. And, like London, Paris itself is rather patchy. There are bits that are full of shops and restaurants and people, and other bits that are more residential, where roads are lined with rows of apartments punctuated by brasseries on the corner at intersections.

Walking away from the tower, we found ourselves on one of those roads, and walked and walked without coming across anywhere that we wanted to, or could afford to, eat. Finally, we took a slight detour to get closer to the Seine and stumbled across just what we had been looking for – a nice little bistro with a reasonably priced menu of French classics. It was really buzzing and we had to wait a while for a seat, but the staff were incredibly friendly (just where do you have to go to find these famously rude Parisians?) and before long we were warming up and tucking into a couple of plates of really nice food (and a nice glass of St Emilion).

After lunch, we visited Notre Dame and then wandered up to the George Pompidou Centre. Sadly, almost none of the latter is free to enter now, so after a quick toilet stop, we hopped back on the Metro and went in search of one of my favourite Paris landmarks – the huge Lavinia wine shop. I had a nice browse there, but the prices were astronomical, so I left empty handed.









By now it was dinner time, and as we were all rather cold, wet and tired, and just wanted to get back to the hotel, we settled for some pretty dreadful sushi and dumplings – a shame, because not much further down the street was one of those pockets of restaurants and wine bars that are dotted around Paris. I’m sure we could have done a lot better, but it did mean that we were back at the hotel at a reasonable hour.

Which was an important consideration. Throughout the trip, we’ve been playing things pretty loose in terms of planning. It has worked out fine so far, but we’re having a lot of trouble finding a place to stay for tomorrow night. You would have thought it would be easy to find a nice little cottage in Normandy for a reasonable price in the middle of winter, but the process of looking for one has been soul destroying. So many of the places in our price range look lovely from the outside, but the furnishings are so hideous, or the renovation so soulless, that the thought of spending a week in one makes our hearts sink (or, in some cases, our flesh crawl). Back in the hotel room, Kate and I took a computer each to cast our net wider, but by the time we got to sleep we still didn’t have anywhere sorted.

Friday 13 February 2015

Day 122: A date with Mickey


We debated for some time over whether or not to take the girls to Disneyland Paris. We knew how desperate they were to go and felt that, given that they had put up with being dragged all over Europe, it was only fair they got to do something that they wanted to do, but the tickets are so expensive – we were looking at roughly 170 euros - that we weren' sure we could afford to go. Then Kate found a deal where the four of us could get in for only 90 euros, so we bought the tickets and off we went.

In the week before, we kept an eye on the forecast and tried to time our visit so that we could be there midweek on a non-rainy day (as it turned out, the only non-rainy day that week). And it worked out perfectly – the day was cold but not overly so, it stayed dry all day, and, crucially, the park was very quiet.  

In the morning, we caught the shuttle to the park and went to the café in the train station for breakfast, before heading over to the front gates. We were a bit nervous about the tickets, so we got there nice and early, but our worries were misplaced and we were soon standing at the gates at the front of our particular queue, tickets in hand. Then, finally, the gates opened and we were inside… sort of. They only open up the section of the park where the shops are at first – you then have to wait a bit longer until they open up the area with the rides.





Our plan was to start in Frontierland as this is where some of the more popular rides are. Again, we were right up the front when the rope was lifted and we immediately set off to the Big Thunder Mountain rollercoaster. I was a bit unsure about this policy as Zoe isn’t really one for scary rides and I was right to be. While Sarah was whooping and Kate was screaming, I was quietly trying to reassure Zoe as she screeched and sobbed her way around the tracks.

Thankfully, the day improved from there on, as we made our way around the park having a go on pretty much every ride. The crowds stayed small, and we rarely had to wait more than 15 minutes to get on – and were occasionally allowed to just stay on and go around again. Sarah and I both loved the Indiana Jones rollercoaster and Zoe eventually found her perfect ride – It’s a Small World. She loved it so much that she and Kate stayed on for another circuit (Sarah and I weren’t sure we could stomach a repeat).










We watched the parade in the afternoon and then split up – Kate went with Sarah so that she could have one more go on the Indiana Jones ride and I went with Zoe for another go on the Dumbo ride and the carousel. Unfortunately, this was around the time that they were starting to close things up, so we weren’t able to meet up again at our arranged spot. Zoe and I headed for the entrance, but couldn’t find any sign of the others – just a horde of people streaming back into the park. After some time, we were eventually reunited – in time to get a good spot for the Disney Dreams night-time spectacular! And although was just as cheesy as you would expect, it was actually a pretty impressive display – a combination of music, fireworks, projections, lasers, fountains and jets of fire so big that they sent a wave of hot air washing over us.