Villedue Les Poules

Hey all,

Things have been going well. Looks like our free Wifi connections at our home in London we found have come to an end. All the unsecure connections are now no longer working... And everyone else has changed there basic passwords to make our life hell. So back down to the Internet cafe. Although this one is £1 all day. What a deal!

Anyway we have finished in Bordeaux. There happened to be a wine festival on, but we had booked our future accommodationn in, so we were locked in with our dates. So we get down to the station and as we go to book our ticket, there was a mega queue. So we missed our train by about 8 minutes! Anyway luckily enough, there is plenty of other trains running back to Paris, so we just got on the train 1 hour later. We were hiring a car, and as the festival was running all the car hire companies were out of cars. So we needed to get back to Paris and hire from there.

This was the last ride on our Eurail pass. Nat thought I may of booked 1st class. Jeez I wished I did! We ended up in the ass of the train, and instead of being comfortable table seat, they have like bench seats facing each other across the train, a bit like the local trains in Perth. This is alright for about an hour but over 3 hours it starts to wear a bit thin...

Got to the airport, and found the hire place. So we picked up our brand new black Golf Plus! Sweet car, although I hadn't driven a car in over 3 months, they didn't ask any questions on whether I could drive OK, other than looking at my license. And it was of course on the other side of the car and road just to make matters interesting!. The pedals are the same luckily!

Anyway off we go into Paris traffic. Pretty scary for the first hour or so until I got used to it. The freeways out are underground with merges and stuff underground. Pretty hairy! Then on the open road it was 130km/h limit and this was pretty scary, especially with people going a whole heap faster than you!

So it was on the road off to Villedue Des Poules. This is a town about 3 1/2 hours south of Paris. First hour was a bit of a drag as the traffic was crap. But finally it was open road and go for it! It was doing 135 km/h and being flashed at as I was going to slow! We pulled into the town of Caen. This town was heavily involved with the WW2 campaign. Ended up at an Italian restaurant for pizza etc. Very disappointing. Oh well the French don't know how to make a pizza in these parts. But it filled the gap anyway.

Starting to get dark, we needed to find our way back on the Motorway and in the correct direction. We got to right spot but the wrong way! The Motorways in France are tolled, so it cost us €1 euro to turn around. 50 cents at the off ramp and 50 back on. The cool thing was that you throw your coin into the basket and it checks the coin and opens the boomgate! After working out the correct road etc, (not much signage for our highway) we arrived in our town about 1 hour later, not long before it got dark (about 10pm!)

Found our accommodation, and time to rest, after that stressful drive. Our hotel room was a hot box, with it being a split level room. But the views were great! Here is the view out of the bedroom.


Day 2
So it was up early the next day and we noticed that the town was setting up for some sort of festival. Turned out that the day after was a tri-annual festival that we happened to be here for! Mainly street parades and stuff. The theme was movies. They had setup up a small sideshow alley and stuff across the road from our hotel. It turned out that our hotel was pretty much in the centre of all the action.

Anyway off to have a look around town and stuff. Picked up some supplies for lunch, had a look at the local wares. Thespecializese here in making copper cooking pots and church bells. So many copper shops! But they were a little pricey for our liking (€185 for 4 piece set), but I believe that they were really good quality. A genuine bronze bell made here in the traditional methods cost nearly €100! Hmmm thinking that they must get paid too much.

Quiet afternoon. Went for a bit of exploring around the Sideshow alley. Had a go on the dodgem cars! There is no rules in this one, so you can go any direction you feel like. There were some brutal crashes! Later on we went to a bar nearby (one of those really small ones to see England get defeated in the World Cup by Portugal. I was going for Portugal (sorry Kirkham!), and everyone else was rooting for England.

A couple of cold beers later and we were getting a bit peckish. So we went to restaurantaunt in our hotel. This was one of the best in town. Had a great meal there, although the menu was in French. Took a while to work it out! And dogs go everywhere here. Trains, busses, hotels, restaurants... There was one at dinner at the table next to us. A cute thing, they were even giving it bits under the table. How cheeky! Rest up for the big festival day.

Day 3
It was a quiet start. When we came downstairs we found out that they were going to tow our car away! It was in a carpark that they were going to use for the festival. So we parked about 3km away, and had to take photos of the streets so we could find our way back. Interestingly they have diverted some of the river in channels around the town. Who knows why? But made for some great pictures.

The town was still so quiet! But by the time that we had got back it was about lunchtime. Turned out that they had setup a Heineken tent where our car was parked. So off for a beer! Even Nat had one! Jeez that Heineken t-shirt must be brainwashing us both. More crepes for lunch, these ones were a bit more traditional.

The festival was about start, and people coming out of woodworkorks, lining up on the street to see the action. No rules here, they just walk between the floats, no 'blue honour line' etc. Check this picture out!

Talk about lack of crowd control! But it all seemed to work OK and people would move when they needed to. By this time it was crazy busy in town. Confetti flying everywhere.

There where several marching bands playing all sorts of music, from traditional to modern day music. This was one of my favourite pictures of one of the groups of horn players. Even got some of them to look at me! So the street parade went on for about 2 hours with heaps of floats and stuff. And then the beer tent was packed! Chilled out for a while.

Of course the washing must be done sometime, so we found Laundromatomat, took up a bottle of locals'al's finest ($6AUD for a great red, spoilt!) and watch the world go by. That was the first photo. While this was on, we went for dinner over the road. Turned out the local police force was over there for dinner and a couple of drinks. Funny thing was that they jumped back in there cars after dinner, and even saw them later on still working!!!

Picked up the washing and the parade was on, this time a night parade, but with everything the same as before. So a good chance to get the car a little closer to home and get the tripod out for some night shots. I think this was the best one I took. It was pretty tricky to take with them moving and stuff, but really wanted that Moulin Rouge float at night.

After this there was a skyshow at around midnight, got some great pictures but once you have seen fireworks pictures they all look the same!

I have decided to split this blog over a few as there was so much to see. Next day we went to Mont St Michel. So check out the next one for Day 4.

Cam & Nat