Arrondissement de Caen

Well, our Paris adventure is almost over (we do have one more night when come back to Paris to catch our train to Milan) so today we are off to Caen.

In everything we read and watched, it talked about how hard it is to do Normandy without a car. You can do a tour but that is expensive. And there isn't really any public transport from Caen to the beaches, so that leaves renting a car. And this proves to be immensely hard when you have 6 people. I had managed to book 2 different 7 passenger cars out of Rouen knowing sometimes they let you book but cancel you. This happened to one of our vehicles a couple of weeks ago. But we still had one vehicle left and they were still sending us confirmations so we felt like that would work out.

So we rode the train from Paris to Rouen and figured out the metro that would take us from the train station to the car rental place. We arrived ahead of time, walked up to the counter to get our vehicle and...... they didn't have one.

They say they were trying to get ahold of us to tell us, and they had one but it was in an accident.... and the dog ate our contact information.... and they called around to all the companies in the area... but.... no 7 passenger car.

But.... they could give us 2 cars for actually less than what we were going to pay for the other one. But Jenny doesnt have an international drivers license as she had no intention of driving. But luckily, you don't need an international drivers license to drive in France so that was great. But... the cars you rent are all standard transmission. It is nearly impossible to get an automatic and Jenny don't drive no standard. But... as it turns out they did happen to have one more automatic car that was just getting cleaned up. So... 2 cars instead of 1 for cheaper than the 1 car we reserved and Jen could drive because it was an automatic. I would drive the other one that was a standard. But, that also means we would pay double the tolls so the car rental people further reduced our car fee to compensate.

So we decided to just go for it. It meant we were split between 2 cars but it would be fine. And, as it turns out, both cars came equipped with GPS. So, we signed our life away and took the cars on the road to Caen.

Now, I am not sure what the settings on my GPS were, but I am sure it was set to.... no tolls, middle of the country, and please seek out the narrowest and curvy roads possible. Because it didn't take long before my GPS had us off the main highway and we were going down every backroad and through every small town on a path that I guess kept us moving in the direction of Caen. Jenny was in the car behind and she had to listen to her GPS losing patience for her not following it's instructions. Jenny swears she could start to hear "tone".

But, eventually the GPS did in fact get us here. In the end, the drive was great and exactly what we had hoped to be able to do when we thought about this trip many months ago. Get out of the city and into the country. It just took a creative GPS to get us there.

I am not sure what I thought Caen was like but it is way bigger than I thought. We only got separated and I lost Jenny once but we eventually found our place, parked the cars, got into our place and sat on the couch to catch our breath. Jenny didn't enjoy the narrow back roads as much as I did so it was a relief to get here.

After a little break we headed out to get some food, look around a bit and then back to our place to relax and plan our day tomorrow. The apartment is really great and we are looking forward to tomorrow.

So, there isn't a lot to show for pictures. I had the kids in my vehicle take pictures as I drove so I will share some of those. And the step counter is under 10,000 so it felt like a pretty low key day.

Look for more pictures and more walking tomorrow. Until then....Read more