Blogs from Lisieux, Lower Normandy, France, Europe

Drive down through Normandy avoiding motorways, as usual (as they send me to sleep) and keeping to the quieter roads which take us through pretty little villages. All very rural and pretty wet. There's been a lot of rain in this area, and indeed throughout France for several days now. We are consoled by the fact that it's raining at home too. The prime concern was to get over the Seine without going anywhere near Rouen as that is somewhere we try very hard to avoid having twice in the past encountered problems there. Bob instead navigated a route over Pont Bretonne and down through Port Audenay. Then we were in the area of lovely Normandy timbered houses. If this area was a bit warmer it would be lovely for a full visit but we are ... read more

From Belgium we headed into France which was a nice change for us because we could understand much of what the signs and people say. As a Canadian it is embarrassing to admit that our French is less than good. Nick used to be close to bilingual and Sarah was okay, but now we have a hard time even stringing a sentence together, but we can often understand what somebody is asking and after a second can give a half-ass answer to get our point across (this was definitely not the case with Dutch or Flemish). We first went to Rouen which is a beautiful old town with many churches and characteristic northern French architecture (what we might call Tudor style). Rouen is where Joan of Arc was tried and burnt at the stake by the ... read more