After a long and, at the very end, pretty scary sail into the port of Ouistreham, sunny warm weather convinced us to take a little break in Ouistreham before our next destination.
On Sunday, we had a lazy morning and not in a real rush to do any activity. However, I had a nice chat with one of the port agents who suggested that we rent bicycles and bike up to Caen, a fairly large city further in from the port of Ouistreham. After a little apprehension of maneuvering a bicycle once more, I quickly got my rhythm with my bike and we headed towards Caen. It was a wonderful ride and we passed by the château de Bénouville where the French president had world leaders for lunch on D-day. We then passed the famous Pegasus Bridge that had been liberated by the Allied forces. As a little souvenir of the historic event and more importantly, in the event of future difficult passages on the sea, I decided to buy this little flask that just might help calm my nerves.
Emergency use only!
We arrived at Caen where the skies started looking dark and ready to pop with rain at any moment so we decided not to explore Caen but headed back to the port before we would get caught in any rainstorm. Just as we were arriving to the port, we saw a HUGE and very royal looking boat with a sailor in uniform guarding the plank entry. I didn’t dare take a picture, but it was impressive! After a little fact-checking, we discovered that the boat belonged to the King of Norway who came to take part of the D-day commemoration.
Overall, I am pretty happy that I was able to continue biking in spite of my tendency to fall and discover a little bit of Ouistreham’s surroundings.