Since it wasn’t raining (apparently rain is a thing in Normandy?) I decided to venture out to explore the small town of Arromanches Les Bains. I also really needed toothpaste, and I thought this would be a great opportunity to look for some. Shouldn’t be too hard, right? To make it short, I didn’t find any toothpaste, but I did have a grand adventure looking at things.
After my unsuccessful search for toothpaste, but an entirely satisfying exploration of Arromanches, I went back to meet my traveling companion so that we could head to the second day of the dressage competition at the World Equestrian Games in Caen.
When we got there, all the parking lots were “full” (this is once again, the French definition of full). The parking lady said there was a mall just up the street with free parking. There wasn’t, but we easily found street parking and walked to the competition. Because we came during the break, and it wasn’t a popular event, we entered the facilities easily and found seats easily as well. There weren’t a whole ton of people at the event. In fact, because it started raining, and half of the seats aren’t under cover, we were able to go upstairs and find some seats.
It was odd that despite this being a world event, there wasn’t a whole lot of preparation done. There was little to no food or drinks available for purchase, and half of the stands didn’t have everything on their menus. Also, the washrooms were not only filthy, but they contained squatty potties that were often plugged or had no toilet paper, or the toilet paper was dirty because they were never on rolls. The stench of urine could be smelled as soon as you opened the door. I felt really bad for older people, and people in high heels or sandals.
The horses were beautiful though.
We stayed till the end of the day and then went back to Arromanches, with a small detour to a grocery store on the way back to the car so that I could get toothpaste. We went for dinner and afterwards I decided to go for a walk. She agreed to come with me, but we didn’t get very far before she wanted to turn back. It also started raining, so that didn’t help her desire. I had wanted to walk all the way to what appeared to be a lookout point, and her response was literally “There is no way I’m going that far.” When I did actually go, it didn’t take more than 10 minutes.
wanderingfawn 
Leave a comment