“Wow, this is a really busy shipping channel, I wonder if that container ship will hit us!?”

Inevitably, it doesn’t, and we safely make the aesthetically pleasing port of Calais. I say aesthetic, but in the 30 or more times I’ve been to France, I’ve never set foot in Calais – save the large supermarket and wine warehouses dotted along the freeway back to the ferry port. Calais to me is the gateway to the rest of France. Some people have been known to tell stories of me driving off the ferry neglecting that the speed signs are in kilometres per hour and thinking they are in miles per hour and doing somewhere around 140 km/h not the signed 90 km/h. Maybe this is just my way of getting away from Calais.

Anyway, great trip! We headed south to near Le Havre where we found our B&B for the night. Lovely place:

Our room was the “rose room”

Still not sure why they named it that.

The owners didn’t speak any English, but that wasn’t surprising, for long weekends, most of the English speaking B&Bs get booked up early. We’re happy to fumble about though!

We walked around the (tiny) village which provided no obvious dinner options so we ended up eating in. In France, for us, that usually involves cheese and a baguette!

The following morning, our breakfast was very entertaining. The woman sitting on my left was 92. Didn’t speak any English, she said she had lost it after the war. I don’t know where she left it.

Anyway, that day, we headed to Paris. We were house swapping with a bloke who was staying at our place in Oxford. Wonderful system. Why leave your house empty when you’re not there? Check it out http://www.homeexchange.com/index.html. We found his place easy enough (driving in Paris isn’t so bad – if Kate does it…) and then we started settling in for the weekend. It appeared as if most of the Parisians had left town for the long weekend, so we made use of the bicycle rental system to pedal around Paris. I’m not sure how keen I would be to use the bikes if the roads were busy… That said, there are many wonderful bike paths. We used the bikes by day and by night, it was fantastic transportation. All for the measly 1.70 euro a day (that is, if you only keep a bike for less than 30 minutes – easy to do when you can swap if for another one at one of the many depots located about 300 m away from each other).

Paris, as it is always, was lovely. I found a couple of interesting buildings:

Curved in:

and on a lean:

We also found an apple that was larger than Kate’s head:

On the way home, we stopped in Chantilly to visit Arnie and Gusia. The Chateau there is amazing:

For out last port of call, they delivered us to their local (large) supermarket. It was my chance to collect a few bottles of local wine. By local, I mean anything from France. Now I have a few bottles to try. Next time we visit, I’ll be able to stock up on my favourites.

Some more photos can be found here. With witty comments of course.

“Wafer is just a poor excuse for air”.

I guess she doesn’t like polly waffles!

Anyway, they were advertising Poutine from Burger King! Is this real? Has anyone tried it? Does it compare to that little French-Canadian cafe on, was it, 4th?

Crazy. Burger King in Australia are busy trying to improve their image with salads and what-not. Burger King in Canada is too busy trying to add French-Canadian dishes to their menu to worry about the health aspect!!

This article (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-17434129) says they get some 350,000 visitors a year. At about £7 a head, that’s a tidy £2,450,000!

Kate thinks that they need to invest in more toilets.

They do state that they re-invest this money into up-keep of the buildings, and excellent way of spending the money. I wouldn’t mind guessing that their cleaning bill is also huge…

Not sold… But I do like their motto!

Recently the display of ancient Egypt in the Ashmolean was closed for refirbishment. The display is now open and it is a great use of space bringing out things that I’ve not seen before, like these chaps…

We will sort out a small selection and post them shortly. Dining outdoors in the south of France – great memories revisited!