Day 1, Ups and Down

Our France 2012 trip had an auspicious beginning as we were all buckled in on the plane in Atlanta ready to begin our adventure.  I was reading on my Kindle when I noticed that people all over the cabin had their cameras and phones out and were snapping photos of something behind us.  Just about that time, an elderly gentlemen came up to our row of seats, stuck his hand in front of me and said, “I’m Jimmy Carter.”  Then he introduced himself to Leon and continued to go up and down each row shaking hands with every single person on the plane.  Of course, by the time I got out my phone, he was already in the next compartment.  We were in the middle aisle and a young couple from Germany was sitting beside us.  They turned to Leon and asked who that man was.  We explained who he was.  They were too young to even have heard of him, but they were impressed anyway that he had shaken their hands.  I knew we would have a good flight because I knew that Air France wasn’t going to let anything happen to the plane that had Jimmy Carter on it!

An interesting aside to that story was that as we were waiting to board, an airline attendant came up and checked in a half dozen young, very well built men, all with shaved heads and wearing khaki pants and short sleeved shirts.   I was getting to board next because of my knee, so we noticed that they were spread out all over the plane…not sitting together.  After President Carter came by, it dawned on us that these guys were probably some of his security detail.  One of the guys was sitting on the aisle seat across from me.  When we landed in Paris, he got his carry-on bag down and I got a peek at the printed tag hanging on the handle, and it said, “Special Agent…”

You never know about a rental car:  We had reserved a Renault Megane with standard shift and diesel gas.  Those are great little cars and are economical to drive in a place that has 1.75 Euro per litre gas.  Well, our car is a Peugeot that is automatic but at least it uses deisel gas.  It is huge!  I swear, it is the biggest car we’ve ever driven.  Must be at least as large as our old Volvo station wagon.  We had bought a chip for our GPS unit because it was half the cost of renting a GPS from Hertz.  I had not opened it until we got here, took it out of the package, and it did not fit our GPS unit.  I about cried.  I had done a lot of research on the web and had even talked to a Garmin representative before I ordered it.  I got out the instruction sheet to look for a Garmin help number and noticed that there was a photo of this chip which is the size of the one that goes in my camera, and tucked inside it is a tiny chip, so the big chip was simply an adapter for the tiny chip that fit our GPS.  Leon and I both broke fingernails trying to get the two apart and finally did, put it in the slot on our GPS, and VOILA!  Maps of France!  

Our GPS is called Helen after our Spain tour guide from last year who always knew where she was and how to get to our next place.  Well, this Helen is very good, but she can’t pronounce French words at all.  We have laughed and laughed at how she pronounces things.  For example:  St. Gatien was pronounced as “Street Gacheen.”  She also has the speed limits in miles even though everything here is in kilometers.  I know I can go in and change the settings, but frankly we have enjoyed looking to see the speed limit is 19 or 56 or 81!  (That is 25 kmph, 90 kmph, and 130 kmph).  Leon was having a hard time driving at 130 kmph.

Helen got us out of Charles de Gaulle airport just fine.  We only made two trips around the parking lot trying to get out, and once we were out of the airport, we never missed a turn.  She routed us north of Paris so that we never got on that horrid ring road.  We were driving in beautiful farmland covered with fields of yellow blooming rape seed and other crops that were so green that it looked like Ireland.  There are fat white cows in some of the fields.  Of course, we were driving 81 miles an hour, and I never got a single photo of the fields.  France has had a ton of rain this year, so everything is lush.  It was misty when we landed and has been raining sporadically all day, but not when we were in the car.  We drove to Giverny, Monet’s home to see his gardens again.  We had been there in July with our kids several years ago, and it looked completely different this trip because it is earlier and has been cool and rainy, so different flowers were blooming.  I took a ton of photos of the irises and azaleas and rhododendrons.  I have never seen irises in so many different colors.  The photos I took do not do them justice.  Some were almost black and others were bi-color, and some were so pastel that they were almost white.  

We had said right before we got to Giverny that we were amazed at how smoothly things had gone…no traffic early on Sunday morning, great roads, didn’t get lost at all.  We were really patting ourselves on the back.  Then we walked out to the parking lot after our tour of the gardens, and the car wouldn’t start.  We couldn’t figure out what the problem was.  We had not left the lights on or the GPS plugged in.  The car had been running just fine, and now it wouldn’t even turn over.  Leon went up to the information desk at the museum and a lady there said she would call the Hertz dealer where we had gotten the car to see what they could do for us.  She even came back to the car with us and was so kind.  Hertz put a technician on the phone to talk with Leon and this guy asked if Leon had tried starting the car in Neutral.  Well, of course not since our cars will only start in the Park position.  Leon came out to the car, put it in Neutral and turned on the key and the car started right up.  Guess what?  Peugeots only start in Neutral.  Problem solved!  As usual, when we get too cocky, God takes us down a peg or two!

As we were driving on the major highways we noticed that there were long white stripes painted along the outside of the roads.  There were signs on the road telling drivers to pace themselves 2 of those long stripes between the car in front of them…they showed photos that said 2 stripes mean security and only 1 stripe meant danger.  We had never seen that before.   France also has wonderful and interesting art and sculpture along the sides of the major highways.  The main highway between Rouen and Honfleur is a toll road…called a payage over here.  These roads are fabulous divided highways, but expensive.  We paid 10 Euros to drive about 25 miles.

We made it to Honfleur and got checked in to our hotel.  Our hotel is up on the side of a hill and several blocks from downtown.  We decided to drive down and park in a lot closer to the square and eat dinner.  It has been several years since we have been to Honfleur.  There is a big square harbor and the town is built around it.  There used to be a few sidewalk cafes out by the water’s edge and lots of little souvenir shops along, too.  There was even a sock shop…sold only socks…and I have a pair from there.  Now there are only restaurants in every single shop on the 3 sides of the basin.  We walked and walked up and down every street and even a block or so away from the tourist area and the nice shops that used to be there are all gone.  Leon said maybe it was just too early for tourist season, and maybe the cold and rain for today kept the kiosks from setting up shop.

The lady who runs our hotel recommended that we get off the tourist streets to eat, so we found a little place a couple of blocks away from the harbor.  In good weather, they have a sidewalk café, but for winter and rain, they have a 3-sided plastic cover that is over all the sidewalk tables.  There are large heaters out there so it is not cold even though it began pouring down rain while we were eating.  We lucked out so that by the time we left the rain had stopped.  It has been so overcast and foggy all day that we could not see much scenery on the drive except what was right next to the highway, but that was wonderful!

This is Normandy and home to buckwheat crepes that are filled with savory fillings.  I had one that had Camembert cheese, sautéed onions, bacon, and potato.  It is always funny to read the ingredients and picture it and when it comes, it looks nothing like your image at all.  This was a huge buckwheat crepe, stuffed with camembert cheese and sautéed onions, but it had ¼ of a baked potato and one slice of bacon sitting on top of the folded over crepe.  The rind of the cheese had been cut away and draped over the piece of potato, then there was a nice green salad on the side. Leon had roasted chicken, French fries, and a salad.  His chicken was a leg/thigh quarter.  You rarely get white meat chicken over here.  We ordered tart tartin for dessert.  I make that at home, but this was a big white flour crepe with the four sides folded to meet in the middle, 4 slices of apple, and some caramel syrup poured over all of it and then sprinkled with powdered sugar.  I should have taken a photo.  It was delicious, but, as usual, did not look anything at all like what I had imagined.

Leon has already crashed on the bed while I have been writing.  Neither of us slept on the plane this trip and we both usually sleep for an hour or two.  Then there was the panic with the car not starting and our hikes around Monet’s gardens and Honfleur, and he is worn out.  I think that it is almost eleven a.m. Arkansas time on Sunday, but not quite 6:00 Sunday evening here, and we have not slept since Friday night.

Tomorrow we will drive along the Normandy WWII Beaches, past Mont St. Michel, then on to our B&B which is about half way between Dinan and St. Malo.  Should be a nice drive.