France 2025 - Day 1

 This year Owyn graduated from high school. We were considering an overseas trip to celebrate and decided to invite my father along, and the three of us would go to Normandy. My Grandad landed at Utah beach on D+3. My father and I had planned to take a trip to Normandy with him, but he died before we got around to it. Now my father is 73 and we felt like it was time to make the voyage.

Owyn is in there, I promise.

Owyn graduated on Wednesday May 21st and we left on Thursday the 22nd, arriving in Paris at Charles De Gaulle on the 23rd.

A slightly cloudy but warm day at CDG.

We landed, cleared customs and got the RER into Paris, heading to the Gare St Lazare, all in under an hour. We didn't check bags, just to make sure we'd be able to make our connections since we had to get our rental car in Caen by 1700 and we landed at noon.

We were able to navigate to the train station and get our tickets to Caen. None of us had slept well on the flight but we all managed to stay awake. Once on the train we watched the countryside glide by for a couple of hours and we were in Caen.

Caen train station (gare) from the rental car.

We were in plenty of time to get our car, though they had some difficulties and we had to wait about 45 minutes for them to bring it around. They were nice enough to give us a discount and we used the time to sit at a cafe and get a drink.

We had not problem navigating to Bayeux and our rental. Google maps worked perfectly the entire trip. The place we were staying in Bayeux was half a block from the main street of restaurants. It was hundreds of years old and definitely had some quirks.

The normal head space is the top of the door. The beam is very low.

Owyn standing at the beam to show height. I managed to not hit my head on it a single time.

We stayed here for three nights. It was perfectly located and very comfortable. Our hosts were quite charming. In fact, everyone we met in France was very nice. My father and I both speak some French and made sure to always greet them first, then speak in French. They would almost always switch to English, but they appreciated the effort. This was just as true in Paris, later in the trip, as it was in Normandy.

After we were settled in, we'd asked our landlord about good places to eat and he gave us several options. We headed out into the street to look around.

This street has a ton of restaurants, a grocery store, bakeries, patisseries, etc. It was the perfect location.

We ate at Alchemie. 

We settled on one of the recommendations of our host and sat out on the sidewalk. There were only two waiters, one of whom didn't have any English. They ended up taking about three hours to get us through our dinner, which they felt terrible about. They gave us some free drinks and dessert to make up for it though.

Owyn and Dad sitting at our table.

The street lit up as the sun goes down.

We got back to the house about 2230, much later than we had hoped for but a good time to help us get adjusted to the local time and beat the jet lag.

As a side note, I'd gotten sick about a week before we left, to the point where I considered not even going. I was miserable the entire trip and even now, a month later when I'm writing this I still am not feeling 100%.

Thus ended our first day in France. An easy day of travel and a great dinner to cap it off.