Up and breakfasted by 9am when we got the hotel to order a taxi to take us to ‘Peugeot Open Europe’ which is in Courbevoie in the western suburbs of Paris. Instead of hiring a car for the trip, we have leased one for 30 days from Peugeot. Advantages: cheaper than hiring and you get a brand new car. Disadvantages: time will tell but hopefully none. Took a while to get there in the taxi (and 35€). The traffic always appears to be busy in Paris and it certainly was this morning. Picked up our shiny new (2km on the ‘clock’) black Peugeot 207 and headed west. Having driven in North America I thought I was used to driving on the right but I had forgotten that in North America all the hire cars are automatics. Having to drive a manual and change gears with your right hand is a whole new experience. Will take a little getting used to.
Thank heavens for a GPS (we bought our TomTom with us). Without it, I think we would still be driving around Paris. As it was it was a bit of a challenge getting from the Peugeot dealership to the first motorway but once there we had no problems. The road system is excellent - and a bit expensive. Most motorways are toll roads and we probably spent close to 20€ in our first day and 400km of driving from Paris to Bayeux and then on to Avranches. The speed limit on the motorways is 130km/hour so you are able to cover distance fairly quickly (even at the 120-125 I’ve been getting along at).
The first stop was Bayeux and lunch. The Lonely Planet recommended fish stew (a Normandy speciality apparently) at a certain restaurant. As it was around 2:30 at this stage and that restaurant had stopped serving lunch so we went to another and ordered what we thought was the next best thing, fish soup. Bad choice! We won’t need to order that again.
After lunch, we went to see the Bayeux Tapestry (or as the French call it Tapisserie de Bayeux). What an amazing piece of work. It’s actually embroidered cloth (not a tapestry at all) and is over 68 metres long by 500mm high. The ‘tapestry’ is a storyline and depicts the events leading up to the Norman conquest of England concerning William, Duke of Normandy and Harold, Earl of Wessex, culminating in the Battle of Hastings. It is likely that it was commissioned by Bishop Odo, William's half-brother and made in England in the 1070s. That’s almost 1,000 years old!! Part of the admission fee was a handheld audio machine that told the story as you walked along. It was excellent and made it very interesting. No photos are allowed here so I had to borrow a photo from the internet.
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| Bayeux Tapestry |
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| Bayeux |
Back to the car via a sorbet shop for the drive to Arromanches-les-Bains one of the first French villages liberated after the D-Day landing on the Normandy beaches took place on June 6, 1944. Plenty of Tourists here and lots of D-Day memorabilia but a peaceful place these days. There are still a lot of the landing barges, used for the D-Day assault, lying on the beach and in the surf off the beach.
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| Arromanches-les-Bains |
We drove further west along the coast to Port-en-Bessin. This is a thriving fishing village. Lots of fishing boats in the river which had a lock separating it from the harbour so that a decent amount of water could be held in the river during low tide. Lots if fishing boats in the harbour too but at low tide they were all sitting on the mud. There was a fish market on the pier – the obvious place to be early in the morning.
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| Port-en-Bessin |
Left the port and headed for Avranches near Mont-Saint-Michel. Booked into an Ibis hotel and had dinner there before driving the 18km to Mont-Saint-Michel to see it lit up at night – Just beautiful. We’ll be back in the daylight to have a closer look.
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| Mont-Saint-Michel |
