We’re still on the Monet trail, currently at Etretat. It’s a popular little town on the coast, mainly known for its cliffs and sea arches – as above.
Tag Archives: France
Chez Monet
We drove from Chartres to les Andelys today, via Giverny and a wander round Claude Monet’s garden. The house is very fine, the sort of place we could actually live in, especially with the huge collection of Japanese prints on the walls. The Monet copies in the studio/sitting room were a little less impressive.
Loire Valley
We went to Chenonceau today – one of the jewels of the Loire Valley! This is what it looked like:-
I don’t think even my Photoshop skills can do a lot with it
Belle Ile and Beyond
We took our trip to Belle Ile and had a coach tour – taking the van would have been VERY expensive. We had a good run around the island; above is Les Aiguilles de Port Coton.
At last, a blog post…..
The weather has mostly been very good, just a couple of days of rain so far. It’s a good excuse to sit in the van and do nothing!
We have been testing out the under 3 Euro wines, (reds) and have to say they are very drinkable, much better than the French wines we got for 6 Pounds from Morrisons! We have decided to stock up before we leave France, with enough to last the rest of our trip.
The French seem to be not very adventurous eaters, there isn’t anything like the selection in their supermarkets that we have in UK and NZ. They just seem to eat French food.
We have been getting into the crepes and galettes. I have bought a cook book so that when I get home, I can make some. We like the one with cheese, ham and fried egg!
I’m not that keen on the unisex toilets and showers you get on a lot of camp sites, and Colin thinks the urinals, or pissoirs as they call them, were designed by exhibitionist men or voyeuristic women. It’s very odd to be walking along and just glance around, and there’s some man….
There are not a lot of medium sized dogs here. There are lots of very small ones, often kept in pairs, and a few very large hairy ones. Not many labs, lots of poodles.
Catching Up
We’ve moved around a bit since our last post, so this is an update on where we’ve been.
The first pic is the old walled city of Saint-Malo, once a haunt of corsairs (pirates or privateers, depending on whether there was a war on at the time), from the beach at low tide.
Rennes
Today we visited Rennes. Not particularly willingly, but our main lens decided to break down yesterday, so we had to get another. None here in St Malo. We phoned St Helier, Jersey, thinking we could go over on the ferry, but they didn’t have one, So, we went to Rennes, which according to our guide book is a nightmare for driving and parking. We weren’t keen, but needs must. After a few false starts, we found a really easy parking space, very close to a shop which turned out to have an English speaking salesman who had spent time in Scotland, and a second hand lens! So we had a walk around Rennes to test it. A seagull decided to poop on me – that’s supposed to be lucky, isn’t it? We are now back at St Malo and the weather is finally starting to look a little better.
le Mont St-Michel (Avec traduction en Anglais)
Vue du Mont St-Michel après marée haute. À marée haute le parking est en partie couvert de la mer.
(View of Mont St-Michel after high tide. At high tide the car park is partly covered by the sea.)
St-Vaast-la-Hougue
The weather brightened up this evening, so we went out for a stroll around town. It’s a small fishing port, particularly famous for oysters. This is a boat heading out for the night as others come in.