Sunday, October 18, 2015
I didn’t get much sleep last night and I don’t have much of
a voice this morning. I also have a slight fever. Today we had 2 long
excursions with bus rides. Since I can pinpoint the time and source of my
infection from a specific bus ride, I don’t want to continue to spread it. I am
staying onboard and trying to limit contact with others for at least today. I
was really looking forward to seeing Etretat but Clay went alone. They came back
to the boat in Caudebec en Caux for lunch. Clay said it was some German dish
with fatty pork and sauerkraut that he liked. He brought me back a pain au
chocolate from Etretat. It was really special. France has an AOP for butter
like they have a terroir certification for wine! I didn’t know that before but
all our Normandy guides have bragged on the Normandy cows and their fatty milk.
It was like eating a pound of sweet butter. I ate the whole thing for my lunch
with an apple. Clay did not realize until I showed him that I had translated
the bakery bag while he was at lunch. He said he passed 2 other bakeries but
that there were French people lined up out the door at Les Tendres so he
figured it was the place to buy a French pastry. He got it right.
We are supposed to be docked here overnight again and all
day tomorrow as far as I can tell. We are to drive to the Normandy D-Day
invasion beaches and have lunch at one of them tomorrow. I checked online and
Google Maps says it is over a 200km drive one way. It will be a very long bus
day and I would have to miss it but it also sounds challenging on a good day. I
guess we’ll have to wait and see how I’m doing before making a decision. This
sucks! Now I really hate that guy who sat down right above and behind me and
yakked all over me when he could have sat in any seat in the back half of that
mostly empty bus!
Clay has gone out again for the afternoon excursion to
Honfleur. They’ll be back in time for dinner at 7pm and there is a folklore
show from 9 to 10pm. There are a lot of long rides from our dock here at
Caudebec en Caux. I guess we don’t go any further downstream than this because
of the huge tidal bore here. We are at a floating dock today that looks like it
can vary by about 12 feet. Yesterday in Rouen we were just tied alongside an
embankment. We had a view of the side of a brick wall when we left in the
morning and when we came back in the evening before sailing, our floor was
above the top of the embankment. I reckon that must have been at least a 6 foot
rise. Etretat was about an hour drive each way covering 54 km each way
according to Google Maps. It corresponds with Clay’s report of the morning was
mostly spent riding the bus. He said they had to wear the AudioVox headsets the
whole time in the bus because the front half was full of about 20 English
speakers and the back half had about 8 German speakers. He said he was at the
dividing line between the 2 groups and had to hear both! This afternoon’s ride
to Honfleur is about 45 minutes and 53 km each way. Another long bus ride. I
believe from the announcements that the bus setup will be the same. I am still
sorry to miss it.
Clay is back from Honfleur and called it another small
seaside resort town. He bought a brochure about Ste-Catherine’s church which he
called the point of the visit. He told me that he had found all the other river
boats. He said they are all docked in Honfleur. Our final documents always
showed us docked here and I have wondered why. I had supposed it was due to the
difficulties of the huge tidal bore but I guess the other lines can handle it
so, I suppose it is cost or availability.
I felt worse when I woke up as Clay arrived. My fever has
continued to rise. I am not going to dinner because I sit right next to the
Celebrity guide and I don’t want to expose her. It is not clear I will make the
long day-long excursion to the D-Day beaches tomorrow either. It sounds like we
are going with the full multi-lingual buses again as today and not the small
English speaking group that could spread out on a less full bus. Again, I know
how it feels for an inconsiderate sick person to infect you by only thinking of
their desires and not the good of the group and I don’t want to be that person.
We’ll see. Clay will put out the do not disturb sign and bring me back some
cheese and crackers after dinner. I expect he’ll skip the folklore performance
anyway.
