Arras to Caen

Caen October 8, 2010

(John) Today we travelled.  We had hoped to get as far as Bayeux but realistically did not expect to.  I had a route planned that would have got us there but our gite lady in Pas de Calais advised us to take the northern route through Dieppe and Le Harvre. Photo: Le Havre

The major advantage of this route was that we got to go over the Normandy Bridge that I had in my ignorance never heard of.  It crosses the estuary between Le Harvre and Honfleur and is quite daunting to drive over.  Before you get to it there is another bridge over a smaller section of the estuary that was really high and very long, from the top of that you can see the Normandy bridge and the first thought in my head was ‘there is no @#$%?%@ way I can drive over that’.  It looks like a narrow ribbon floating into the sky and falling sharply to the other side.  To add to the thrill, there is an entry fee for the ride.  5€ gets the whole family onto the roller coaster.  There are 4 lanes.  Two each way.  The gradient is so steep that trucks slow to a crawl.  Everything else goes as fast as possible in the fast lane.  So you get a choice, crawl behind a big noisy truck or go 120kms an hour on a strip of tarmac that is far too windy and far too high for vertigoans like me.  So I just said ‘

“take lots of pictures, cause all I’m going to do is look at the road”.  Photo: Normandy Bridge - Yikes!

So we didn’t get to Bayeux today, but we did get to Caen.  (Pronounce it Quand or the gite guy in Saint Malo will think you said Cannes and be pretty amazed that you drove from Arras to Cannes to Bayeux and then to Saint Malo in two days.  It took us two days for us all to realize the mistake – oh! how we laughed). 

We had a good time in Caen, once we ditched the car.  An expert U turn across three lanes into the only available parking space within three square miles by yours truly was how that was accomplished.  We did not even have to buy a ticket because the nice young, handsome, parking officer told us that parking for tourists was gratuit.  After being Harrassed in Arras this was a pleasant surprise.  Floating on our good fortune we booked into the first hotel the Lonely Planet Guide directed us to, hiked the half mile back to the car to get the bags, ate some old food we had lying around and went out exploring the castle walls and the marina.  It was Friday night; the air was warm so the place was buzzing with lots of amiably drunk students and tourists.  At night the Normandy Castle in the centre of the city was a playground.  Likely, locals stay away after dark fearing muggers, molesters and other menaces.  Knowing none of this we gaily romped around the grounds, running around the ramparts and playing in the shadows created by the spotlights. Photo: Castle Ramparts, Some steeple? and Just goofing around, that's all.