Saturday, September 1, 2012

Day 1 - Getting to Courseulles Sur Mer

This is going to be brief because we have to go meet relatives for lunch in less than an hour abd we're not ready. In fact, theres is no hot water! The host is coming by. This should be interesting. I should have kept up with my French.

The flight was not the greatest. First, they make you walk by business class when you get on the plane. So you get to see all these people in these awesome pods, getting ready for an awesome relaxing flight which they can properly lay down and sleep through. There were lots of kids in business class! What the hell. They don't even know how good they have it. The seats weren't as crammed or bad as Transat or some other cheap carriers (we flew British Airways.). The headrests had these things that pulled out on either side to support your head. Better than nothing. Also they gave us a blanket, pillow and toothbrush (thank gad, there's nothing worse than red-eye flight gundge mouth). I took Melatonin to help me sleep and drank some wine. They weren't cheap with the wine, they gave us like three of those airplane bottles. It only helped me fall asleep only to be woken up by the worst turbulence ever. Ugh. It was a huge plane, and I always thought bigger planes didn't feel the bumps as much as smaller planes. Either I was wrong or these were huge bumps. I mean the plane was being tossed around. At that point I hated my life. Jamie slept through it all which mean he got to drive three hours from Paris to Courseulles. I would have preferred to sleep on the flight. It's impossible to sleep upright in those chairs. I tried watching Battleship but it was garb.

pre flight drinks to numb the pain. didn't work.

free stuff. a pillow/blanket/headphones/toothbrush

We landed in London for a three hour layover. It was fine. It was cute being in London and hearing all of them speak Londonese. Heathrow is basically a shopping mall. Now you know. We got an Americano and two bottles of water from Starbucks. Fourteen POUNDS. That's the last time I buy Starbucks in the UK.
flying over the UK

Heathrow airport. Basically a big mall that smells good with great washrooms.

The flight from London to Paris was fine. I didn't care because I just wanted to be here already. The plane flew quite low to the ground so it was nice flying over the English channel, seeing all the boats and the coast of France come up. It was awesome actually. Beautiful escarpments and cliffs. Can't wait to see them up close.

I thought that city in the distance was Paris. It wasn't.



Picking up the rental was a breeze. Paris Orly airport is pretty straight forward. Now, getting out of that airport and onto the correct highway, well that's a little difficult. Especially when your piece of shit GPS doesn't have reception and you don't have any proper maps or sense of direction. We were lost for about 15 minutes, but finally we sucked it up and turned Jamie's data roaming on to access maps. It cost us about 60 bucks, but desperate times..

We got on the right highway (by fluke, I had no idea how to navigate, but words fell out of my mouth and we ended up on the right path). The highway is just like Ontario highways, but with tolls and less signs. The scenery is about the same, except for the odd CASTLE on the right. Everyone tailgates and no one presses the brake unless necessary. Also motorcycles just weave like it's nobodies biz and no one cares. In fact, cars make room for them to weave. wtf. THREE HOURS LATER we find the flat and get settled. I'm thankful the sun was still up for our drive or we would have been royally faulked up the wah-zoo. Jamie drove the entire way because I was a zombie and probaly would have gotten us killed, if Jamie hadn't as he drove 150 km/hr!!! ("what? everyone drives fast"?! ) FML.

mmmm!

view from balcony. It smells like the sea, fresh, crisp and salty.

Went for dinner at a local restaurant. It's pure seafood here. Which is great for me but bad for Jamie since he is allergic. I had fantastic mussels in a creamy garlic sauce. A mountain of them. He had a sangwidge and fries. Normandy is popular for it's cider so I had a mug of some. It was delish and got me drunk since I was so tired and famished. Service was shit and I think they hated us because our French was shit but what are you gonna do?

After dinner it was about 10pm our time and we were ready for bed. I took a nice hot shower and left Jamie with freezing cold water. I felt bad for him because all he wanted to do was take a hot shower and go to bed. Turned out the hot water tank thing was bruck and we had to get the guy to come fix it. He did the following morning and all was well.

We woke up at 10am - I could have slept longer but we had to meet my (great-great aunt and uncle at a restaurant around the corner, and our hot water situation wasn't fixed yet). It ended up getting fixed by the nice man who owns the place and we made it to lunch. Which was so great, I will remember it forever. More on that later.


















2 comments: