Day One - La Belle France

ARRIVAL IN FRANCE AND TRAVEL TO CAEN

 

 

The plane landed at Charles de Gaulle (CDG) Roissy en France at 8:00 a.m. local time.  An uneventful flight ( the only kind any passenger really wants ...  got to love the Boeing 777 ... ) ended with a smooth landing and relatively easy customs clearance.  The RER train ride (the RER is the regional above ground train network) into Paris was punctuated by occasional stops in the northern suburbs of Paris (not the most scenic of the Parisian landscapes) but ended at the Gare du Nord, one of the 6 major train stations in Paris serving the various regions France with Paris as the center of a hub-and-spoke national railway system.  The train I needed to get to Caen, left from the Gare St.Lazare, however, which meant schlepping my bags down into the Metro under the Gare du Nord to the Gare St. Lazare which was fortunately the next major train station to the west in the hub-and-spoke system. 

 

 

If the Gare du Nord is at the 12 o'clock position on a large clock face, the Gare St. Lazare would be at the ten o'clock position.  St. Lazare serves the cities and villages to the west of Paris all the way to Brest in Brittany and Le Havre in Normandy both of which are on the Atlantic coast.  Whereas the Gare du Nord, a considerably larger facility, serves those cities and locations north of Paris all the way to Brussels and the Netherlands.  Gare St. Lazare, however smaller, does have the distinction of serving as home for the Eurostar train which travels to London via the English Channel Tunnel (AKA the Chunnel).  Sadly it does not host any of the superfast TGV trains for which the French are famous.

 

 

The train I took, while lacking the style and class of train travel that once characterized the French SNCF train system, was an inter-cities that was clean, fast, and quiet.  The train ride from Gare St. Lazare to Caen was accomplished in only about two hours and fifteen minutes with two or three brief stops along the way.

 

 

 

My host couple, Marco and Brigitte LeColley were at the Caen train station to pick me up in what seemed to be typical Normand weather ... grey, clouded, and raining.  Marco is what the French call an "Informatique" or what Americans would call an IT expert for a large French insurance firm.  Brigitte is a social worker.  They have three adult children, two sons and one daughter, all of whom live in other parts of France.  Their home is in a suburb of the Caen metroplex.  They are a  lovely couple with an excellent command of English, expansive knowledge of the Normandy region, and an appreciation for their own culture and history, as well as an interest in that of others.