While Blanche was visiting, Hookie (Blanche’s cousin) had exchanged his house for the old Chateau in France his family had owned. He invited for dinner over the weekend, and we packed the five-passenger Honda with six people and headed for Rouen, France 700km away (a 6-hour trip). The predominance of the roads was highways, but the last 15 miles narrowed to one lane (total), and we were all having a decent laugh. We found the Chateau and were all impressed with the large rock studded gate, large circular driveway, and its majestic look as we approached. In Hookie's greeting, he mentioned there was not any room for us at the Chateau. Unfortunately, the house that looked enormous was only one large room deep. Upstairs, there was a long …show more content…
The only place we could find had two 8’ by 10’ rooms, but we took it. We started up the 18” wide creaky stairs and found our antique rooms with floors leaning to the point marbles would roll. I began to have some concern for our safety, but others were just laughing. The conveniences were substandard, with one separate public bathroom for the floor. Fortunately, there were not many other guests. Blanche took one room with the kids, and we slept in the other room in one single bed, almost like camping out. The next morning we woke and went to the lobby for breakfast. I looked at the menu and was aghast at the prices. Sarah said we could just have some bread and coffee, so we ordered. Our coffee arrived, but there was no bread. The waiter mumbled something, and we noticed a young woman ride off on her bicycle. After a while, she came walking the bike back up the hill with an unwrapped loaf of bread in her front basket. As she passed the window we were sitting at, the loaf of bread fell out of the basket onto the sidewalk. She picked it up, brushed it off, put it back in the basket and continued to the store. It turns out; that was our loaf of bread, and we had a chuckle when we were back to the