Our “Tents”, Adventures at the Ticket Machine, Stop shooting me we’re on the same team!!

As we finally arrived in Caen we braced ourselves for the sub-par accommodations we all secretly (or not so secretly) expected, but were blown away by lovely hotel and spacious and comfortable rooms.  Although a bit rushed for time, we made it to supper on-time-ish and enjoyed a delicious buffet.  We had been worried that with the late arrival we might have to call off laser tag, but when we told the kids the tram was leaving in 15min they all scrambled, grabbed what they needed and met us outside in no time.  Based on earlier conversations, we were expecting about 12 kids to come out, but in the end everyone but two gathered outside!

We made our way to the tram station and were faced with our next major challenge… how on Earth do we get tickets?? After pacing a bit, staring at the machine in dumbfounded confusion, and pacing some more, a nice local girl took the time to walk us through the steps despite the fact that she couldn’t speak English and our French speaking Scouts were conspicuously silent…  With tickets finally in hand the tram arrived and we were faced with our next challenge… how do these silly little cards get into the machine???  After a few attempts our local “guide” politely took the ticket out of my hand and correctly inserted it.  We gave her a pin and a loonie in thanks, lol!

The tram ride into the heart of Caen was one of the highlights of the day, which says a lot considering our day started in Paris! Allowed us to see more of the beautiful historic city

Dec 7, 2018 – So that is the end of the blog postings from Europe… to be honest, the trip was a whirlwind and we just never found the time to keep up with it.  We’ll try and do better next time 🙂  So now it’s 3½ years later and I’m going to do my best to remember what happened for the remainder of trip… forgive me for getting things wrong, lol!  At least we have the pictures and videos to tell the real story!

I remember the tram ride ended at a huge train station and crossing the road involved several lanes of traffic and also several lanes of tram rails… fortunately it was late at night and their wasn’t many people around.  The area of town seemed a bit… colourful… though, so we kept together!  With some effort we managed to find the laser tag place.  Turns out none of the staff could speak English (which is fair enough seeing as we were in France), but we learned from our tram ticket incident and shoved Steven and Devin forward to use their French skills to save us all.   Devin managed to stay out of it, so it was all Steven.  

We played at least three games I think, and I remember it was HOT!!  Can’t remember what they were charging for a bottle of water, but it was considerable.  We realized that they actually make their money off of water and that the laser tag was just a front.  There was a moment in the last game when someone (I think it was Nathan) called out that there were no teams this round… it was a lie… there were still teams… and a “blood bath” ensued.   It was past midnight by the time we finished and made our way back to the tram (last tram of the night) and to our hotel after a very, very long day!


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