road trip with Camembert

For an ideal summer week in France:

* Bring your best friend and rent a car. Try not to faint with fear while driving out of Paris in the mad rush hours.
* Drink real espresso, complemented with a piece of dark chocolate, in a seaside café in Normandy.
* Buy Camembert cheese, newly picked apricots and local cider and throw in a couple of bottles of wine. You will develop a tolerance for the strong smell of mouldy cheese that is fermenting in the hot car.
* Admire the rocky coast of Normandy and Brittany, playground to the likes of Joan of Arc and many a famous painter.
* Sense the shock and grief still lingering over the eerie fields of Omaha Beach.
* Stay at picturesque chambres d'hôte and struggle making conversations with the chatty hosts in forgotten French.
* Fear for your life on the back streets of Le Havre.
* Discover that your friend wants to stay by the seaside but you dream of reliving history in castles and stone age tombs in luscious Anjou.
* Have epic fights with above-mentioned best friend in the idyllic Loire valley and make up in time to have equally epic giggle fits over strange things such as ghost towns and monsters hiding in wheat fields.
* Spend a day of massive thunderstorms in Chartres and its enormous cathedral.
* Come home without your suitcase because the Parisian baggage handlers had an important football game to watch. Allez les bleus!