Monday we drove to Dover to catch the Euro Tunnel train. There are two ways to take the "Chunnel". You can catch the train as a passenger in London and arrive in Paris about two and a half hours later. Or you can drive your car to near Dover, have it loaded on a special car train, and then be taken off just a few kilometers south of Calais. We did the latter. Vicki is traveling with us this week, and she did the driving. This is the view from inside the car train.
It only takes about 20 minutes and suddenly you're in France. The stations on either side of the Channel are not attractive. They look like a combination of a high-security prison and an electrical power substation.
But once you are in France, the countryside seems more open than in England. The farms and much larger, and suddenly you can see for miles in any direction. We drove on the wonderful French highways for a couple hours until we arrived at our destination, Honfleur. Here is shot from the street where we are staying here. You can see some typically Norman features: half-timbered houses and the use of slate shingles on the sides of houses as well as the roofs.
Our house is pretty plain, but for 80 euro a night, who can complain? I'll send some pictures of it later. The town center of Honfleur is incredibly cute. Below is a view of the boats in the Vieux Bassin, the old port.
And here is John and I on the other side of the Vieux Bassin with the Quai Ste-Catherine in the background.
We had a pricey but absolutely outstanding meal that evening at a restaurant there. Vicki took this picture of several water and wine glasses through another wine glass. The service at provincial French restaurants is not fast. They assume you are making an evening of your meal and that you plan to spend the entire night there talking. So our meal took well over two hours.
More on our Normandy adventures soon.
