After breakfast on board ship in Le Havre we hired a car to check out some old French seaside villages. Le Havre was completely bombed during World War II and has been rebuilt, so is not as interesting as some of the older towns. We drove to Étretat first. This is a charming Tudor village on the sea with beautiful flower boxes everywhere, filled with such flowers as petunias, geraniums and ivy. At the beach, there are limestone cliffs that look as if they have just been sliced vertically down to the sea. The colours of the French countryside in this area are amazing, and they shimmer in the northern French sunlight. They say that this is where impressionism began and I can believe it, as there were Monet spotty colours everywhere. At Yport, which was close by to Étretat, we saw an art teacher giving lessons to a young woman, a middle aged man and a boy of about twelve years. We also drove to Fécamp to look around. All three of these seaside villages were attractive in their own way and all had the beauty of the limestone hills. The fields we passed went from green to gold to burnt brown with white cows and their calves scattered throughout. The whole scene today was a feast for the eyes. We saw evidence of the war in this area. We saw the remains of an air-raid siren on a roof - top and there was a plaque to a resistance fighter who died for his country. Once home we had a farewell dinner with Valerie and Tom. We will miss them when they leave the ship tomorrow. Between the four of us we have done a vast amount of travelling and not all on the Dawn Princess. We have travelled by elephant, camel, donkey, four wheel drive, sedan, rickshaw, shank's pony, bus, train, petit train, plane, ferry and boat. We all said tonight that we hope we have many more adventures together. Bill and I are off now to see the 9.45 show which is a musical tribute to the Beatles. The performers arrived on ship today from Liverpool so we expect they will be somewhat authentic. We put our clocks back another hour tonight when we go to bed. Now we will be 9 hours behind Melbourne. I really like these 25 hour days. (Barbara) It was interesting driving in France again after 12 months. On the narrow coastal roads we had cars, motorcycles, pedestrians, bikes, horses, tractors, dogs and cows and when we reached the villages every possible parking space was taken unless you went at least a kilometre out of town. We have now set sail (in our diesel-electric ship!) across the English Channel for Southampton (Bill)
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