After a light breakfast at the train
station John and Denise arrived on the train from Paris and after a short
luggage sort out we left for Etretat which is a lovely town surrounded by high
cliffs and it has good history. We wandered around the town and caught up on
their travels from Texas to Amsterdam and then via Paris to join us over coffee
on the beach front. From there we went
to Honfleur which is another well known town and fishing port and again we
wandered around for a couple of hours before heading back to to the car. We had
a fairly short drive along the coast and then went inland to Cormeilles to
check in the Hotel. The temp was still very high and when we booked the Hotels
for this trip earlier in the year we had no idea it would be so blooming hot.
The Hotel did not have air con but
hey ho we had been suffering for about ten days with quite warm days and cooler
evenings. A drink in the bar and we went off for the surprise dinner at the
Chateau. As we arrived the tables and chairs were outside and John was able to
open the Champagne bottle using a sword which if done correctly removed the top
two inches of the bottle leaving the cork intact inside. John did it well and
no doubt it is resting somewhere in Austin Texas.
Dinner was excellent and we had a
choice of two starters, and we all had both, then a lamb course with vegetable
which tasted great and finishing with another choice of two deserts which we
all tried. The dinner was washed down with some nice red wine and finally
coffee with a small glass of Calvados to finish it off.
To our surprise and unexpected
pleasure Ingrid refused to accept payment for this dinner and she had
disappeared off to bed so we could not discuss it, what a lovely lady she is.
Afterwards we did a quick walk around the caravan site which was quite busy to
show our friends where we stayed. We had a small drink in the lovely bar before
leaving back to the Hotel and it was still rather warm and we all wondered if
we would sleep well.