9/25/2014 Honfleur

A BIG ROAD TRIP!! Many people have been recommending Honfleur as a very nice excursion. All of those people saw it as an overnight, but Bill wanted to do it in one day. It is a 2 1/2 hour drive and Bill tends to doze off, so Marie and I were worried.

We made it in exactly 2 1/2 hours, and that included a big buchon in Paris on the way to the autoroute. (A buchon is the cork in a wine bottle and refers to traffic jams.)

Honfleur is located just where the Seine ends at the English
Channel. It has a rich history of being conquered and reconquered during the 100 years war. Some of the very old buildings are still there.


Salt was a major industry in this area and it ALL belonged to the King. This was a warehouse which held 10,000,000 million kilos of salt. (One of the reasons for the French Revolution was the salt monopoly.)


There was a lovely little boat basin which is surrounded by restaurants.






Bill walked around with us until we found a place for lunch. We were looking for a crepe place, but passed a restaurant with fabulous looking mussels and frites. Turned right in. We all started with the "fruits de mer" or shellfish plate.

There were shrimp, clams, and bulots (whelks in English) a sea snail.


Our waitress took our picture.


Then we all had the mussels.


After lunch, Bill went to the library to hang out and Marie and I continued exploring the town.

They had a butterfly pavilion. Look carefully. There is a practically transparent one sitting on the red plaque. It's wings are outlined in red, but you can see the leaf behind it.


This is a Blue Morphious at rest. You can only see the blue when they fly. If you watched Go, Diego, Go!, you may have seen the show where Diego rescued one of these.



We retrieved Bill and got back to Paris safely. It was a little touch and go, when a truck traveling much slower than we were pulled out to pass with no warning.

Since we had such a good lunch, we had leftovers for dinner.

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