Our Normandy road trip turned out to be really beautiful and instructive. We managed to stop at several locations on our drive from Bayeux to Honfleur. Normands are not wrong when they joke about their rainy weather, the whole time we were moving around with an umbrella and a raincoat in our travel backpacks as the sunny sky would turn into a storm in no time. It was fun, but I feel their pain.
When we arrived in Bayeux on Saturday night we started looking for a restaurant to have dinner, but past 10:30 pm it is hard to find a place that serves food. We ended up having a croque monsier and a beer at a pub called “Les 12 apotres”. The city was quiet, only the tourists were walking around. We took very nice pictures of the Cathedral which is nicely lit at night.
Early Sunday morning, we saw the cathedral and went to the Tapestry Museum. The building is impressive since it was Bayeux’s Grand Seminaire. There, we saw a 70 metres long tapestry from the 11th century which recounts the story of the conquest of England by William, the Duke of Normandy.
Leaving Bayeux, our friend suggested we stopped at a few places where important events during WWII occurred. Starting with Pointe du Hoc, we also visited Omaha Beach, the Normandy American cemetery and memorial, Arromanches Beach and Museum and the Pegasus Bridge. In this area of Normandy, many Americans, Canadians, British and Germans lost their lives. Seeing the bomb holes on the ground, the bunkers, the cemetery and the remains of the artificial Mulberry port darkened my mood.
After the historical route we took the street along the coast all the way to Honfleur, passing through Cabourg and Deauville. The ocean and the nature were stunning. Some of the houses were huge and reminded me of the villas in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California as they looked pretty fancy and they were named cutely after the beach or the sky… kind of kitschy in my opinion but certainly, the beauty of the picturesques houses did not diminished, everything blended perfectly with the gray sky and the green surrounding them.
Once in lovely Honfleur, we went for dinner and again, realized that the city is kind of quiet. Some of these small cities tend to be really active during the day but tranquil after dark. Next morning, I convinced myself that the town was actually full of tourists who perhaps smartly spend all their energy during the day and they rest at night.
Very close to Honfleur’s city centre and located up a mountain, there is a chapel devoted to Notre Dame de Grace. There is a terrific lookout very near the chapel, where you can see the entire city and the Normandy bridge in the distance, the longest cable – stayed bridge in Western Europe.
