An early start for us this morning as the weather was looking quite promising according to the Meteo and Yahoo weather and so around 10.30 we left for Rouen using what the SATNAV calls the shortest route. We did this once before some years ago and the shortest route was a really lovely trip through the countryside involving small towns etc., really lovely.
The last bity of the arrival in to Rouen took us on a rather a devious route along by the river, albeit the wrong side, going through the dock area whereas the other side has all the hills and trees and nice views, ah well at least it got us to where we wanted to be. We found a car park in the centre of town and just squeezed under the max height bar by about 6 cms but were lucky also to find a space which would allow us to park our rather large car.
From there we went to the beautiful old Hotel de Bourgtheroulde which is pretty much in the centre of town and as it was lunchtime and they have nice Loo’s we decided to have lunch there which was very good as they were able to understand Noels wishes that food should not contain garlic etc., After lunch we walked down to the river where there were three large river cruise boats, one Viking Rolf from the Viking Line, One from Avalon Line and one other who we did not recognise. The Avalon ship looked the nicer with bigger windows and what seems like a really nice restaurant and lounge, perhaps we will try it some day.
We then wandered along the various streets and visited a couple of churches and then a nice cup of tea before heading back to the car park. We did notice however there appeared to be a lot of beggars and street sleepers about which always makes a town look poor. Ironically good friends of our who were visiting Austin in Texas found the same thing, it was not like that when we visited it last early in 2015.
The sun was shining on the way back to our caravan site but we stopped by the local town Courmeilles to pick up some smoked salmon and baguette for tea. In the evening we watched the German made film ‘Das Boat’ which is well made although the models were not the most realistic, but it was 1986, but nevertheless a good film.
And so to bed after a pleasant day where we were able to stretch our legs and knees etc.
