Voyage to Normandy - Part 1

Home Sweet Home

We set the alarm Tuesday morning so that we could begin our voyage to the city of Caen in Normandy.  Not the easiest task, since we were renting a car and had to pick it up before beginning the trip.  We aren't that familiar with this city yet, so we had to plot out a route to drive to a new tram stop, park our house car and then take the tram into town to pick up the shiny new rental car.  Then drive the car back to the tram stop, pick up the other car and leave it back home before starting our drive north...
Note: we do not live anywhere near a bus or a tram line - the closest bus line into town is 1/2 mile away...it's kind of like us at home trying to get to the airport with the Max line...we don't live anywhere near and would have to transfer from a bus to a train to reach the airport Max...eek.

The downtown of Nantes

I know it sounds rather dumb of us to be stressing about a task such as this...well here is a small map of the city here...sorry I'm blowing it way up for you to get an idea of our driving challenge.

Green labels denote tram stops near unrelated streets!

And after picking up the rental car near the river downtown, we had to navigate roughly Northeast up to a tram stop along these crazy streets...no road goes through!!!  Luckily Dave looks for landmarks - tall ones - and found a yellow crane to drive close to and we found the car. Whoo Hoo! So now back to the house to drop car #1 back.

The night before, I printed up directions on Google maps for our voyage north.  Good thing I did...but at REALLY crucial places they let us down...way down.  Oh well...

Circle road around Caen

So...we took a wrong turn and landed on the 'Peripherique' or circle road around Caen because the crucial road I was going to use wasn't marked. We ended up driving in a huge circle not recognizing any names or numbers on the exits. I see a sign to downtown and decide to wing it...heck every town has a big church with a steeple in the center...let's try our luck....OMG!!!

One Way Capitol

Well, this map is gorgeous but it doesn't show the one ways, pedestrian-only streets or roads packed with double-parkers.  Suffice it to say, if we were married, we'd be divorced by now.
I ordered Dave to park the car in a Monoprix parking lot and made the decision to walk around and find the hotel...we were painfully close - in fact just across the street!!

The lovely lady at the front desk calmed us down and patiently explained the way to their parking lot with 6 spaces.  We survived!!!  We felt like the Allied soldiers who arrived in Caen to liberate the French -  but that lesson is for the next post...A Demaine~ (until tomorrow...)