June 11, 2025: Krakow to Paris to Caen

(Written on July 12 By Devri)

We woke up early again, though not as early as the day before, to catch our flight from Krakow to Paris, specifically Charles de Gaulle. We were all sad to only be in that place one night because it was pretty comfortable. In fact, that was the most comfortable bed and pillow combination we’ve had since our first night in Belgium, and we’re not sure that night counts! 

Our same taxi driver, Jerzy, picked us up to take us to the airport. The airport seemed much more crowded when we arrived, and it was the first airport I didn’t get a full pat-down after my hip failed the metal detectors. We found food at various places, and then waited to board our flight.

Toalety Toilets, Krakow Airport

Keeping spirits up

We lined up as normal for the final boarding pass check, but instead of entering a jet bridge, we went down some stairs and took a shuttle out to the tarmac to board our plane. It was a bit strange, and we were quite crowded on the shuttle. We boarded our plane through the rear exit/entrance. 

Krakow Airport

Shuttle out to our plane on the tarmac

Flight from Krakow to Charles de Gaulle Airport

Everything else went normally after that. Gabe made friends with a little boy who was sitting right in front of us. We were excited to land in Paris and see the Eiffel Tower again. 

After getting off the plane and getting our luggage, we followed the signs to the rental counter. Regret #1: not stopping and getting food. We should know by now that picking up a rental car takes 10 years, and it is not a good idea to send in a Saville into that kind of situation without a full stomach. That and it was a lot harder to find food once we hit the road than we thought it would be. 

We came to where the rental cars were, and the sign pointed down a level for the offices. I stayed upstairs with the kids while Brian went down to get our car paperwork taken care of and collect the keys. 30-40 minutes later, Brian was still wandering the airport, trying to find the counter. I didn’t realize that he hadn’t seen all the rental car places right outside the doors where the kids and I were sitting, and I was too tired to connect the dots. (The cold we’d been passing around had finally caught me.) Brian finally discovered that the rental desk is outside where I’d been looking the whole time (and where Gabe insisted that we needed to go to get the car.) Which brings us to Regret #2: not checking that location first, or at least not pointing it out to Brian. 

Brian waited in line, but he didn’t have his passport as he had left it with us. I sent Michael to run it out to him, but Brian had told us all to come (after he initially told us not to. Regret #3: Not following his initial instructions to stay where we were. We ended up sitting on low concrete barriers in the sun while we waited for them to finish cleaning our car. (Question: Why wasn’t it cleaned already? They knew what time we were coming for it?)

We finally got the car, and Brian had to figure out how to move a manual car that he was unfamiliar with 2 feet forward so we could load our bags. I recognize that this might make Brian sound foolish, but when all the signs in the car are in French, and you don’t speak French, and the last manual you drove was not nearly as fancy, you would really struggle too. He really struggled even knowing if the parking brake was on or off based on the messages in the mostly electronic system. We finally got our bags inside (took a little Tetris thinking to make it work), and we headed on our way. 

Our one and only car rental of the trip

Brian didn’t make it far before he needed food. Originally, we planned to get food when we were outside of Paris, like way outside of Paris, but getting the rental car took so much longer than it should have, and so Brian was begging me to find food (see regret #1), and I couldn’t see any food places that were recognizable. (I hate this job when it’s in English, so I REALLY hated it when the restaurants were in French in a place that is 100% foreign to me.) The place I picked had zero parking, so we drove down the road until we spotted an Aldi. It had parking, but that Aldi itself was super sketchy. It was like a grocery store had a love child with a thrift store who then abandoned it to fend for itself. It was my first time in an Aldi, and I seriously hope that they are nicer in other places, otherwise I have some serious questions about Lara’s sanity since she talked about it so much in Florida last year about how great it is. (Brian: I’m surprised we didn’t see rats. Or ROUS’s - rodents of unusual size. Seriously.)

We got some packaged chocolate crepes, 2 bags of croissants (one chocolate and one regular), some yogurt, some bananas, a prepackaged chicken wrap, a pair of pre-packaged ham and cheese croissants, some Nutella biscuits, and 9 liters of water. We didn’t take in a bag, and they didn’t give us one. We asked if they had a spoon to eat our yogurt, and the checkout lady gave us a large metal spoon. I tried to protest, but she insisted. I’m still not sure if she meant for us to bring it back. (Brian: we never did.)

We got going again, eating our goods on the way. I will say that I wasn’t at my best. I was super tired and could only think about how we were going to get to Caen much, much later than we thought. I was worried about Gabe not getting enough rest, and about our early morning the next day. 

We finally arrived in Caen, and my tired, grouchy self tried to find our apartment that at first seemed like it didn’t exist. The directions were not super clear. We finally found the number on the building, but which door was it? Brian left Michael with the other kids in the car to help me figure it out. We found the key, tried it in one door, but we had no success. We finally figured out that there was a key fob with the key (it wasn’t just a keychain), and that got us into the building. Then, it said, “It’s on the 1st floor on the right.” Okay, well, we understand that in France, the first floor is actually what we call the 2nd floor in the U.S, but there was a half a staircase right at the entrance. Was the door at the top of the half flight or was it a flight and a half up? How were we defining the first floor here? There were no apartment numbers or labels. We tried the key in a door, it didn’t work, so we tried the apartment up 1.5 staircases. Thankfully, that door unlocked the apartment.

Brian went to go get the kids and luggage while I went to the bathroom. Then, he went to drop off the rental car while the kids and I got some things settled a bit. This apartment was a little funky. Here are the pros:

1. There were three bedrooms. Michael somehow got the lucky straw and had his own room, which he loved.
2. There were four beds, which meant that none of the kids had to share a bed, which they loved.
3. There was a washer and dryer! And they were separate units! We were able to do two much needed loads of laundry. 
4. It was probably the least expensive place we have stayed and will stay at this entire trip.

Here are the cons:

1. The toilet was basically put in a closet. No trash can in that room, and you had to wash your hands in the kitchen one room over. Kind of weird. The bathroom sink and shower were on the opposite end of the apartment. It was a straight-shot down the hallway, but it made it a little tricky. If you did need to use the toilet, at least you didn’t have to wait until someone got out of the shower, so I guess you could call this a pro. I thought it was incredibly inconvenient. 
2. I found a sheet that looked like it had all the welcome information, but it was in French. I pulled out Google Translate and it said that they don’t provide a cleaning service, so we needed to clean the apartment before checking out. Uhhhhh….I wanted to cry because we had to be out by 8 am for our tour the next morning. It only said we needed to strip the beds (no problem) and vacuum, but I couldn’t help wondering about the “we don’t clean” the whole time we were in there. I mean, did our toilet get cleaned before we came? I’m assuming the sheets do because we were asked to strip the beds, but still. How clean was this apartment? If I had realized that this place didn’t include cleaning, I would have picked a different place. 

After starting a load of laundry, we set out to find food. By this point, it was 7:30 p.m. We had planned to start walking towards the rental car place near the train station and then Brian would walk towards us. At least I thought it was the train station, but my tired brain was struggling to remember, especially since we had decided to rent a car when I reached my very real decision fatigue back at the end of April. When I looked up the address to the rental place, I saw that it had closed at 6:30 and had to will myself not to panic. 

Caen Castle

We walked about a block from our place where we found this cute little plaza with several restaurants. The kids decided to eat at a creperie there, so Michael and I got to work using Google Translate on the menu. I sent the translations to Brian. I told him to just take an Uber to us since it was a 30 minute walk, but he ended up catching a train for under 2 euros that dropped him off right by us. Go Brian! (Brian: my shining moment of the entire day. Please ignore the many, many, many not-so-shining moments the rest of the day when I kept losing my cool and then when I just about wanted to cry when I noticed the rental place closed at 6:30. Fortunately, I found instructions on how to drop it off that night and it all ended well.)

Church of Saint-Pierre (St. Peter's Catholic Church)

Eating dinner at that cafe was the best part of the day, even though the kids were a little too silly for my frame of mind. The atmosphere was just charming with these old buildings and cobbled streets. And the food was excellent. 

After we were finished eating, I sent Brian with Gabe back to the apartment, and I paid the check. Rachel, Michael and I walked a little bit extra to see the large gothic church nearby and the Norman looking castle. After snapping a few photos, we headed slowly back to the apartment.

St. Peter's Catholic Church in Caen, France

Michael needs a shout out at this point. He knew that I was basically broken and barely hanging on by the time we went to dinner. He kept pointing out all the positives and telling me how well I had done planning this whole trip. He literally held my hand on the walk home, double checking that I was okay (I told him I really wasn’t feeling well).

We made it back to the apartment, and I got pajamas on, brushed my teeth, took a sleep aid, and went to bed. Brian stayed up and got our second load of laundry (which he had rotated when he took Gabe back) into the dryer. I really hope he wasn’t up too late past me. (Brian: I was. Oh well. Who needs sleep anyways…)