Rouen, France
(written 08:02 CET 5/3/2006 in Sarlat, France)
We awoke to a snow-lightly-covered town which we wandered around taking a few pictures of. We sat in a café on a square facing yet another amazing old building and wrote a few postcards while drinking coffee.
The church Église Jeanne d'Arc in the central square where Joan of Arc was burned alive is especially strange - huge curvy slopes not dissimilar to the Sydney Opera House, one of which becomes a long covered walkway. Under the other side a market was running where we grabbed some fruit and snacks for the day.
A few more ancient buildings walked around and photographed and we were ready to get on our way.
Pulling off one of the motorways for smaller back roads, Liz took her first turn at the wheel of our little car, at a stop where huge dumps of snow had fallen in the middle of a forest. She expertly piloted us off the (crushed, melted) ice and along the back roads.
Many snow-lined kilometres later in Pont Audemer, I spotted a huge Decathlon store, which someone on the
Lonely Planet forums had told me was a French camping/outdoor store. We pulled in and wandered around inside, picking up a little camp stove and gas bottle, some cutlery, etc., and a huge warm jacket for Liz.
Just as well, as wandering back outside (as the shop closed for lunch - very common everywhere here) we discovered a blizzard was dumping snow everywhere! (
pic)
Fearless Liz had no qualms driving us off carefully further onwards. The snow stopped for a while a little later, and we had a nice break at a gorgeous little river (
pic).
Our rough goal for the day was to take in some of the D-Day Beaches along the Normandy coastline, and we stopped at the eastern end of these at a little town where there was blue skies, sea birds, a lighthouse and yet it was snowing! This was against everything our brains could cope with, so a coffee later we got on our way.
A quick stop at a random beach (all lined with seaside second houses people no doubt flock to in summer) and a bit further on at a Canadian memorial (at least they had an Aussie flag out front with the rest), before we pushed on to the main goal along this coast line.
The American Military Cemetery features countless crosses in gorgeous peaceful surroundings, and was quite a moving place. We arrived right on closing time so had to hurry our visit more than we would have liked, but we are glad we made it to have a look.
A while later we picked a random place called St Lo to stop in for the night, which turned out to have no French beer or any food whatsoever at the pub, all the cafés and restaurants were closed, with the exception of a lonely kebab/pizza place. The helpful staff packed us up two cheap dinners which we ate in our room.