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| Bonjour! |
Last full day we have in Normandy and finally the sun was out a'shining! Until then the sun had been hiding for most part of our trip.
Time for some breakfast. We found this highly rated breakfast cafe near our hotel on Tripadvisor. It was really crowded with locals and we could only find outdoor seating. They provided us with blankets as it was chilly.
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| Pain au chocolat, tartine, cafe au lait, jus |
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| Great start to the day |
Honfleur
We decided to drive to a neighbouring town Honfleur, a 20min drive away. The sun attracts people out so it was very packed when we arrived. Honfleur has a population of over 8,000 people and more than 3 million visitors a year, making it the third most popular tourist destination in France. It has a bustling port and an interesting connection to Impressionism too. Eugene Boudin was from Honfleur and brought his friend Claude Monet to this town to paint waters and the great outdoors. Which probably explains why there were so many art galleries in this little town! We visited some art galleries before chancing upon this antique market with a carousel as a backdrop.
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| We chanced upon a Sunday flea market |
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| Mirror mirror on the wall |
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| I'll have the dark grey and gold, s'il vous plait |
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| Wish I could bring one home |
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| More antique finds. I told K if we picked right, maybe a painting here could fetch us a hefty sum in years to come? |
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| The beautiful carousel |
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| Some medieval looking street |
For lunch I mentioned I would like to have some oysters since seafood is everywhere in this seaside town. We finally decided on one restaurant and that lunch took... forever. The food was nice though, I really enjoyed my 3 course meal - oysters, steak with fries, and ending it with some refreshing sorbet. Perhaps we were supposed to slowly savour our food and take in the amazing view. But we couldn't wait to proceed with our journey, another 45min drive to the famous white cliffs of Etretat.
Finally at about 3ish we left the town of Honfleur. The drive to Etretat was pretty cool. We had to drive over the Normandy Bridge, once the longest cable-stayed bridge in the world although it no longer holds this title. The bridge took 7 years to construct and finally opened in 1995. We had to pay a toll on the other side; clearly this bridge needs some funding.
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| On the Normandy Bridge |
Etretat
Midway we got lost in the town on Le Harve and had to do a little detour. 45min later we found ourselves in an overly crowded little town of Etretat. See when people refer to the Etretat cliffs, I had in mind the white cliffs with no civilisation near it. Boy was I very wrong. Etretat is also the name of the town and since the sun was out that afternoon, probably everyone in Normandy and beyond decided to come to see the cliffs and chill out in this little town. It was extremely difficult to find parking and it was full of tourists, like us.
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| Arriving at the town of Etretat |
However the view was worth it. Like what we were told by the Avis car rental guy, "you need to see it at least once in your life. And after that, it's ok." he said.
We climbed the steps leading to the cliffs and had a panoramic view of the surroundings.
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There was a little church on top of the cliff.
This was also our first group shot. |
We were satisfied so we decided it was time to head back to Deauville for our last dinner in France. I had booked a table in the morning before we left the hotel.
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| Last dinner in France |
Overall another great trip to France. Looking forward to the next one, but meanwhile, I'm happy to go back to London and use some English :) Time to park my rusty French aside.
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