Honfleur, France…. we have arrived!

Honfleur France

One of the highlights of the Paris and Normandy river cruise… or even any ocean liner cruise that docks at Le Havre, France is the small harbor town of Honfleur.  Today’s photos are all shot by my daughter Ilyse.. so you are seeing the town of Honfleur through the photo lens of a 16-year-old…

Talk to anyone that has visited this town and they all say the same thing… they loved it and would go back again in a heartbeat.  When I Googled to see what the translation of the town’s name would mean instead I found a definition of the town on Wikipedia:

It is especially known for its old, beautiful picturesque port, characterized by its houses with slate-covered frontages, painted many times by artists, including in particular Claude Monet, Eugene Boudin, Gustave Courbet and Johan Jongkind.  Now I am not going to try to pretend that I know a lot about art, I love looking at it but I don’t know one from another, except Monet which tomorrow’s blog will be about as we visited his Gardens and Home on our sail back down the Seine River to Paris.

All I can say though is I can see what the draw would be for an artist.  The harbor with all its boats, the cafes lining the harbor with its bright colors and all the many shops lining the narrow streets.   And as you can see, Ilyse loved all the shops!  She finished up her souvenir shopping for all her friends!  We also visited it’s church St. Stephen’s which is built entirely of wood and when you enter and look up to the ceiling it reminds you of the hull of a ship.

Excuse me sir looking at the camera over my shoulder, I don’t remember telling you to “smile”.

Another draw of Honfleur is its seafood.  Here you can find every type of seafood imaginable.  For our lunch we chose one of the cafes on the harbor and ordered what I call their Complete Menu but I am sure that it has a more formal name than that.  What it is is you pick one option from their listed appetizers, main course and then dessert and you get it at a set price.  We paid 13.90 each and had a ton of food for lunch.  I ordered snails, mussels and chocolate mousse… Ilyse did the same except she said no to the snails and had something called fried cheese… which she said she didn’t know what kind of cheese it was but it tasted wonderful!

Yummy!

We had two options while visiting Honfleur that Uniworld offered.  We could come in for a guided tour and spend about an hour shopping and then take the motorcoach back to the ship and have lunch on board and spend the afternoon visiting the port of Caudebec-en-Caux where we were docked or you could spend more time in Honfleur and have lunch and do more shopping and take the motorcoach back around 3 pm.  As you can tell we chose the second option… which when we arrived back to the ship Ilyse went on shore with another couple to see the local church which our guide had told us was very pretty.  I opted to take a quick nap on the sun deck as the weather was really beautiful and frankly I was really tired!!  It is hard vacationing!!

That evening as a past guest of Uniworld we had a little cocktail party where the captain, Pierre and the hotel manager Sebastian came around to each table to talk and to thank us for returning to sail with them again…

At 6:00 pm we set sail for Vernon and tomorrow’s visit to Claude Monet’s House and Gardens!

Don’t you wish you were 16 again?

Here is the welcoming committee for Honfleur!

My daughter, the Queen of the Self Photo.. these kids are going to grow up one day and find that one of their arms is longer than the other!