Monday, May 24, 2010

Déjà Vu—France

By Claire
We left Freiburg behind this morning, heading into France within an hour as we work our way to Calais to catch the ferry to England. It was fun to be back in the land of the French, trying to translate road signs again; We even saw an IKEA. We stopped at one of the wonderful French picnic areas along the road—a sign alerts you 1,000 meters in advance—hauling our stuff down to a picnic table in the shade of the many trees. This was the view and what we have seen all along the way.



Because the campground would be closed for the resting hour between 12 and 2 pm, we opted to hang out at the picnic spot for an hour, reading. The weather is perfect so it wasn’t a hardship to stop and relax. I even fell asleep.

We found Camping Les Breuils in Verdun with no problem, even though I had different GPS coordinates from three sources. I wish I understood why there can be different styles and different numbers. We were glad to just cruise on in. The pool looked very inviting and everything is included in the €13 price: WiFi, pool, hot showers, lakeside spot, fresh bread and croissant delivery in the morning and a friendly welcome. We set up in a couple of minutes and got down to some serious relaxing right away.



My hunk of burning love






Some reading, another nap and then a walk around this quite large site to see the view across to our campsite.



We wish the weather would hold but it looks like more rain in our future at some point. Right now, we are just loving the warm weather.

Tomorrow we will arrive in Calais at a camping spot right at the port which will be quite convenient since we have an 8:35 am crossing the next morning. We’ll gain an hour when we arrive at Dover.

Love is the poetry of the senses. ~ Honore de Balzac

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

You're killing me with the warm weather pictures. Would you believe its only in the 60's this week in Davis? Downright chilly! • Sheila

elisabetta said...

Great decoy foto of Chuck, spent under trees! "Burning love" indeed~ many a truth is said in jest!

I have a reverse itinerary story from '99 which ur vibrant opening foto brought to mind: two of my daughters & I had just left Dover, took the Chunnel, had left Calais by train for Paris. Along way we saw the EXACT same scenery as in your foto ~ among other pastoral delights.
We'd just ridden horses in Hyde Park, a lovely memory for me (esp as eldest had narrowly survived a trampling in '98!) I turned to her and said,
"Kate: wouldn't it be lovely to ride horses on that hillside?"
and Kate said,
"No. You can't do that."
and I said,
"Well why not?"
"MOM: you can't ride through FOOD."

Duh mom! Hope you enjoyed your croissants; I'm making Karin's lemon cake later today! Ciao from Passignano, Italia.

Unknown said...

What a wonderful day! I think that if you wanted to drive someone crazy, you could lock them in a room with all of those cuckoo clocks. It's fascinating how the human mind works--all the variations of clocks--not to mention the Twike!