Versaille

We intended to visit the city of Rouen today. This city is mostly famous for its cathedral and it is where they burned Joan of Arc on the stake. However, the city was crazy to drive around and we were running out of gas. We could not find a place to park and when we started to look for gas stations they were all underground and thus, had a height restriction of 2 meters. Julie was not up to spending the money to stay at the campsite in Rouen after spending a half hour driving around the modern city. So we headed off to our next stop. Les Andelys is a small town with a ruined castle. The castle was nice enough to walk around, but it was closed because it was a Tuesday. So we saved some money, because I didn’t think going inside the castle would have been worth the 3 euros entry. It being closed convinced Julie.

The drive to Versaille was a long one. We originally wanted to split up this long drive, but since we didn’t stay in Rouen, we needed to move on to the campsite in Versaille. We intend to use this campsite as a base for exploring Paris. When we arrived at the campsite, one of the employees was really excited that we were from Canada. Apparently the chain of campgrounds has a few sites in Quebec. On our way back to the van we saw street signs pointing to what they considered “Canadien” style lodges. They had wooden floors with waterproof canvas sides and ceiling. You can have a look at them online. We had already put our Canadian flag on the front window and before we even had a chance to sit down a boy came by to say high. He is on exchange for two months and had come to Versaille to see Paris with his host family. He said he was from Barrie and that the host family told him he shouldn’t go over to the van to say “Hi”. His response to them, was “Canadian’s are the nicest people in the world and not to worry about it.” Once he was off, one of our new neighbors returned and the lady asked us if we were really Canadians or American’s pretending to be Canadians. Peggy and Bruce are from Nevada on tour for the summer. They purchased their van from a dealer in Amsterdam, and strange as it is, they were driving a Volkswagen LT28. We chatted for quite some time before calling it a night. Julie said to me later, that the flag had already paid for itself.