After our venture to the D Day beaches my family and I were
physically and emotionally exhausted.
The whole of our journey came down like a lead weight on our shoulders,
and we only wanted to just coast to the end and go home. Unfortunately for us, we still had two more
towns before arriving back to Paris and flying home. We decided to take it one day at a time, and
sought nothing more than to go easy and relax.
The Town of Honfleur wasn’t easy to navigate by any the imagination. Finding the hotel was practically
impossible even with the navigation, and the streets were very narrow and
crowded. At one point we found ourselves going down the wrong way of a one way street. Our hotel was a former girl’s school and it had a certain whimsical charm with narrow wooden stairs that went up in different areas almost like a house in the Harry Potter books. In fact, it's safe to say this whole town feels like Diagon Alley in those books and the movies.
The town itself is a quaint little fishing village with a
working harbor near where the Seine meets the sea. We walked around and saw a beautiful church
to start, and walking inside was like walking into an overturned hull of a
ship. The church of Saint Catherine was built by ship makers, thus the odd shape shape of the roof which makes it look like an overturned galleon. Inside was even more strange because there were images of pagan figures like fauns and other things next to images of
saints here which is something I had never seen before. I felt like I had entered a great Viking mead hall. Maybe a flavor of Hogwarts too, with the huge bronze bird rector stand and the wooden paneling.
Beyond the “ship” church, the town had nice shops with
delicious looking foods but the highlight for me was the church itself. We had a nice lunch on the water, delicious sardines, as big as my hand with pom fritte (french fries). You certainly don't see sardines like these back home.
I think I was physically and mentally exhausted by this point because we retired to the hotel just after and I flopped on the bed to rest. As I lay there in the quiet space, I felt a little strange. We were nearing the end of our trip, and I had seen so much. Normandy had taken a lot out of me, but we still had one more highlight to see. Tomorrow
we would pass over the huge bridge spanning the harbor and head to Giverny.
