Honfleur & Another Notre Dame

At the end of our time studying abroad, I left for the weekend to go visit a friend in London and I got to travel to London with Lizzy which was a lot of fun… despite the annoying cold I had conveniently gotten the night before we left. Saturday through Monday we spent time around London, and Monday afternoon I returned to Paris on my own to meet up with my Family for my final week in Europe.

We stayed in Paris Monday and Tuesday, and in that short period of time I met them at Montmartre, we went to Versailles, and got to the top of the Eiffel tower (there’s a separate post to come on that experience). They also saw a good amount of Paris highlights, like Notre Dame, the Louvre, etc. before I had returned from London. Wednesday we got up bright and early to board a train to Rouen, where we rented a car and quickly see the Notre Dame cathedral… it looked like the one in Paris except for the fact that it was poorly kept up and there weren’t nearly as many people (in fact, there were next to none) who cared it was there. After our quick stop at the cathedral we made our way to Honfleur.

Honfleur was a beautiful costal town that seemed to take the breath away from each person in my family. My pictures don't do it justice. Sadly, we had limited time in Honfleur, so knowing we had a lot of driving to go we decided to spend that time eating a nice lunch along the harbor. It seemed there were an endless amount of restaurants all packed with customers sitting outside enjoying the heat and quality seafood, most restaurants had nearly identical menu items. We finally found a place with an open table, and an option for my picky brother to eat, and enjoyed our time out of our rental car (we called it the big blue rolling turd… RV reference anyone?) Being in Honfleur, even for the short amount of time that we were, really got me thinking about how many different places there are to see in France, and how diverse the country’s towns can be. I felt like I definitely began to get a grasp of the French culture but each town I visited added to that, and I didn’t even make it to all the regions I wanted to.

I’m so happy we got to see Honfleur, for me it was worth going out of our way to have the short experience we had. In retrospect, I would have liked us to plan more time there. It is definitely a town I would recommend visiting if you have the chance.