On To Etretat

A bit of the camping car aire in Honfleur, Saturday afternoon

Ditto

So to get around the Bay of the Seine, you go over it on the
Pont du Normandie, Vicki's worst nightmare of a bridge;
it was foggy, raining, so we couldn't see the ugly harbor at
Le Havre

Up in the clouds, soaring

Once you're off the bridge and have paid your toll, then
you go up on this 6% grade fly-over to get to the toll-way

So we got to Etretat Sunday evening and parked in its nice
but not cheap aire; and watched it rain all that night; and
all day Monday; the photo above is from Monday afternoon;
it is now Tuesday morning, 11AM here, not raining, and
it looks like the dense fog may burn off; then we will walk the
kilometer through town to the plage to look at the famous
sea cliffs and arches; wifi we've been mooching off the
adjacent municipal campground has helped us pass the
time and get a lot done, however

Honfleur

We got to Honfleur early Saturday afternoon and found its aire. I had thought previously that Bourges' downtown aire was the largest we'd see. It must have 60-80 sites. Honfleur states they have 120, and certainly there are more than that. By 1PM, when we got there, all the legal and arguably legal sites had been taken. We squatted in the turning circle of a dump station, paid our 10 euros, and set forth for the grande bassin, a few hundred feet away, hoping our home wouldn't be towed away. When we got back a few hours later, the camper was still there, and there were scores of even more dubiously-parked rigs, with scores more arriving by the hour. By dark, the aire was very nearly a grid-locked parking lot. But it all worked out. The rain began in the early evening and it rained all night and into the next day. We left in the afternoon after I bought some langoustines, snails, and mussels for a repast, skyped with Rachel and Rebecca and Penelope at McD's, and drove on to our next stop, Etretat. Campers were still arriving at Honfleur. Brick for brick, stone for stone, Honfleur has got to be the most heavily-visited place we have been to in France. Virtually all the visitors were French, too.

On the grande bassin in Honfleur, sort of the grand plaza in Honfleur

Ditto, from another angle; it is sort of the sanctum sanctorum of Honfleur's
harbor areas (have I been seeing too many cathedrals?)

Mariner's museum

Street scene

Ditto 

Honfleur's very strange little wooden church

Double-naved interior, all bedecked in semaphor; are we in church or on a
cruise? Wait a second, maybe life just is a cruise, and Jesus is our cruise-
director...(I would bet the ranch that this already has been said by some 
Baptist minister in Texas, completely seriously too)

More interesting buildings

Ditto

Flowers in a park between the TI and St. Leonard's church

Another street

Honfleur was one of France's great ports until the Seine finally
silted its harbor over; many great cruises began from Honfleur;
then Honfleur was rediscovered by hazy- eyed French artists,
Victorians, and the rest of us; still, for all its touristiness, it's a
beautiful, memorable little place

Deauville

We stayed in Caen an extra night to see more of the museum, then drove on Saturday, stopping to look at and then have lunch in Deauville. Its small aire was full, the weather was closing in again, so we decided to make haste for Honfleur and its giant camping car aire.

Deauville harbor, casino; we parked by the polo/racetrack
complex, whatever

Caen Memorial

So we departed Chartres, intending to stop in Evreux and see the cathedral there. But the traffic was heavy, the streets narrow, and there were no parking areas available near the church. Seems the circus was in town. So we drove on to Caen, spending a night at a camper store/aire there, and then another at the aire next to the Caen Memorial. Daughter Rachel had urged us to see the Caen Memorial, and that was our goal. Over the years, we have seen many WWII museums, in France, and Germany, and England; and even the US, though such museums are fairly scattered there. Somehow, in all our travels, we had always missed Caen and its Memorial. It is perhaps the largest and most comprehensive of the many Normandy museums, and we are glad to have finally made it. Alas, we had to share the museum with many thousands of French high school students and did our own visits in off-peak waves. We have visited many museums with many school groups over the years, and I have to say that these French kids were absolutely the most focused and well-behaved I have seen anywhere. Never a smart phone in sight. Completely on task with their assignments. Still, their numbers were overwhelming.

Main building of the Caen Memorial

Outside sculpture

Main lobby

A Hawker Typhoon strafes the information desk; a failure in
the air, the Typhoon was relegated to ground support and
museum use; but it was the P-47 Thunderbolt that earned
the appellation "tank-killer"

The museum uses just about every medium to tell its
multiple stories

Thus

A German "Enigma" coding machine;
the Brits broke the code(s) early in the war
and read German naval dispatches almost
contemporaneously throughout the war; and
did not reveal this fact until many years later

Abbey Church of St. Pierre in Chartres

So we were walking the 3k from the campground to the cathedral in Chartres, along the river Eure, minding our own business, just entering the old town when

What's that?!

And just a few blocks from the cathedral

It's the formerly Benedictine abbey church of St. Pierre in the
Valley; now a parish church (it said), seized in the
Revolution when the abbeys were abolished; it's tower is
10th century, the rest 12th and 13th, just a generation or so
younger than Chartres Cathedral

Wider view, from the north

Closer view of the tower, built when memories
of Viking raids were still quite fresh (the last
one in the 940s as I recall)

Archeological display in the tower

So anyhow we went in, despite strained eyes and wrenched
necks from nearly a day at the cathedral

And were rewarded with another unheralded surprise, a
rayonnant Gothic church, beautiful windows done presumably
by the same folks and workshops that did the cathedral's

Thus

And thus; note the elevation, aisle, blind
triforium, clerestory windows

Of course after a while you begin to notice the
nave is under a massive net; things are falling
down; just small things, let us hope

View from the choir back to the tower;
things may not have altogether fit...

Still, gorgeous 12th and 13th century windows

Still standing up

It must be tough to be just "another" Gothic in Chartres

Chartres Outtakes

As I said, these cathedrals are a pain in the neck

Our first day at Chartres, we had lunch at a place called Le
Pichet--recommended by two of our guidebooks--where
Vicki had the best beef bourgignon ever, and I had an onion
soup that would have embarrassed Campbell's

Near the north side of the cathedral, Chartres
firemen practice their rappel skills

Nearly every city, town and village in
France is covered in beautiful flower
gardens, but Chartres was exceptional

Today's wedding photos are from the north
porch of Chartres cathedral

In a stained glass shoppe adjacent to the cathedral; Vicki is
thinking seriously of taking it up...someday

And just off the cathedral square, a
classroom of the International School of
Stained Glass

Same gargoyles that have adorned our bookshelves since
1979; probably the same gift shoppe too

Historic home of the Office of Tourisme in Chartres, the
Maison de Saumon; have I mentioned recently how
uniformly helpful and energetic these people are, everywhere
in Europe?

Ever wonder what happens to all those little candles people
light up in churches?

Walking through Chartres' pretty downtown, a muralist
working on a new building

Our campsite at the municipal campground, the Bord du
L'Eure; we've been staying there from '79; the trees are larger,
but everything else is pretty much the same

It's a  3k hike from the campground to the cathedral: first
through these luscious woods, then along the river Eure,
then into the old city; one of the more pleasant strolls to
a great destination