Normandy 2024
J’adore la France, and how lucky we were to spend almost two weeks in Northern France, road-tripping from Rouen to Mont St. Michel! It’s seems y’all like a travel blog as much as I do, so let’s talk about why you should take this roadtrip, filled with history, farmland vistas, and Calvados! This is a shoulder-season break anyone can enjoy, so let’s turn the clock back to September and head to France!
Why France, especially after last year’s week in Paris? This trip was to celebrate Sergio’s 40th birthday — or as he calls it, his bonus thirties — and if you know Sergio at all, you know his love for hard cider. Whether he tastes it or ferments his own, this man loves bitter apples like no one else I’ve ever met. And there are few places in the world on his Apple Wish List than Pays d’Auge, the birthplace of Calvados in the place of the same name.
Not only is September Sergio’s birthday month, it’s also a fantastic time to visit Normandy after the summer rush (and the 2024 Paris Olympics!) but before the small towns become less accessible over the winters. It seems like road trips are fast becoming one of our favorite ways to travel together, so with some Rick Steve tips and a handful of hours with Google Maps, we settled on overnight bases in Rouen, Pays d’Auge, Bayeux, and an add-on at the end at Mont St. Michel. Roads are easy to navigate and well-maintained, but there’s no guarantee you won’t get behind a tractor during the harvest season, so selecting multiple home bases reduced our travel time between rural destinations.
If you’re like us, a key part of your travel research these days is to determine whether a hotel or an AirBnb is a better fit for your needs on any particular trip. For this particular trip, we wanted to find a place that was close enough to the center but with reliable (ideally included) parking, as well as a breakfast that suited our dietary needs. Other than our last two nights, we spent this trip in three Airbnbs, which, for reasons not entirely clear to us when booking, were much more affordable than hotels in each of the towns. You’ll always get a quirk or two with rentals (such as getting exactly one roll of toilet paper or one dishwasher tab) but having a clean, quiet place to retire to at the end of the day was worth an extra trip to the Carrefour.
But let’s back up for a moment.
We flew again on British (SEA-LHR-CDG) and despite the hiccups, it’s still been our airline of choice to and from Europe. It’s hard for me to say no to all of those miles even though it means a layover in LHR, a place no human desires to enter after a long-haul flight. Delta has a similar set of options — and a flight direct to Paris — but without the codeshare with Alaska it’s sort of a non-starter, as Alaska is the best domestic airline if you’re based in Seattle and now is back in full codeshare with American Airlines.
But you’re not here to learn about air alliances.
We planned a longer layover in LHR where we could debate whether it’s late enough to eat at Wagamama (this time no) and how many books I could buy at the WH Smith (two because they were small) and we tried not to fall asleep at the random empty gate we found. But we ended up going out of LHR late, arriving in CDG almost 2 hours behind.
Guess what didn’t arrive in CDG? My bag. And where was my bag?
It was in Turkey, of course.
Actually there’s no of course here — IST and CDG aren’t even close in letters or in physical space — so alas we picked up our rental car and drove two hours to Rouen, arriving at our apartment after midnight! There’s an art to getting around old European towns in a car, and it’s not a well-practiced art in our household, especially on less than four hours of sleep. Thank goodness for empty streets and no law enforcement officers to watch us cheat by driving in a bus lane and possibly going the wrong way for a very, very short stretch of road.
But we made it.
Nothing like waking up that first morning in Europe! Our lovely B&B was located right in the town center (so a little bit of night noise, unfortunately). But that first night? We were dead to the world and woke up to church bells and a pigeon couple warming two eggs on a nest. Despite the high number of college students and the energy of the town, Rouen is old. Old old. Rouen began life as a Roman city, was overrun by Vikings, and remains an important port town on the Seine to this day. If you’ve followed our travels at all, you know that a walkable, midsized city is our ideal jetlag town, and Rouen was clear and cool and perfect.
The two biggest sites in the town proper were both churches — the Notre Dame Cathedral and Church of Joan of Arc. The Cathedral grew from a modest 4th-century church to the beginnings of today’s cathedral in the 12th century, and from the moment you walk inside, you know that it’s really, really old, a technical term I learned from my Study of Architecture elective in college. You might not feel that you know this church, but you most certainly do, as this is the cathedral in Monet’s 1894 series of paintings where the different lights across the day dance on its facade.
The nave is very high with a cracked ceiling (notice the tarp in the leftmost photo) and has beautiful original stained glass, ornate carved stone, and tall, narrow Gothic arches. It was minimally damaged twice — once during the Allied bombardment in 1944, and then more severely when a turret fell through the roof in 1999.
The other famous church in Rouen is far more modern and is at the site of Joan of Arc’s martyrdom. Yes, Joan of Arc was a real woman, though not of the flowing locks in the films; she was a deeply religious teen who heard voices of three saints who told her to win the Hundred Years War for France and crown the rightful king. If you know anything about young women in history, you know it didn’t end well. After a sham trial conducted by English sympathizers, she was convicted as a heretic and burned at the stake. Europe can be a parade of Gothic cathedrals, but this church, dedicated in 1979, is reminiscent of an upturned Viking boat and has a soaring, asymmetrical ceiling and incorporates stained glass windows from a church destroyed in 1944. Everything old is new again, and the Patron Saint of France’s relatively humble church is awe-inspiring.
Giverny is one of those day trips from Paris that I’ve never managed in five or six trips. This picturesque little village is on the map today because it was Monet’s home for the last 43 years of his life. The gardens and house are beautifully preserved.. and overrun with tourists (make a reservation ahead of time and skip the long ticket-buyers line). Nothing like an influencer who is not here for the experience, but for the photos.
It felt like a postcard, Giverny — it’s no wonder that Monet was so inspired here and that his beautifully curated garden brought him so much joy. We had a lovely late lunch and a walk through the village after our tour. So many of these experiences feel overrated, but this was exactly as charming as advertised.
Kudos to the folks at the Monet Foundation — the information in museum and garden was informative and approachable to someone (me) who doesn’t have deep art history knowledge but is excited to learn more (always).
Let’s return to something very, very important again, and that’s my luggage. When we last heard of my luggage it was in Istanbul. During the previous day we tracked it to LHR and then to CDG. But I still hadn’t received any updates from the courier service, and the airline’s tracking system was still showing the bag in Istanbul. Not to flex on the airline, but I trust the Pebblebee more than the baggage tracking system from the mid-1990s. I was there for the mid-1990s and there were a lot of wonderful things. Technology was not one of those things.
Side note: Can’t recommend Pebblebee enough for those of you who have an Android. I’m never flying without them again.
If you think my dream trip to Giverny included an hour on the phone with BA, you’d be incorrect. In short what I sussed out was this — BA contracts with a baggage vendor in many airports (the office I visited to report the missing bag) and that entity contracts with a courier service to deliver bags. If BA didn’t think my bag was there, how in the world would this other company and a courier know the bag was there and bring it to me in some apartment two or more hours from Charles de Gaulle?
It wasn’t happening. And Giverny is more than an hour closer to the airport than Rouen, so we sucked it up and drove back to the airport to pick up my bag.
Which was exactly where Pebblebee said it was.
So I know there are the very passionate carry-on only folks among you. Let me say — I respect the carry-on only way of life. There are times when I will go carry-on only, but it’s been a long time since I’ve traveled internationally with only a carry-on and a backpack, and especially for longer trips, it’s not realistic to fit everything I need into just two small bags. I feel like a granny saying this, but just medication and contacts for two weeks is most of my backpack (and a book of course). Let me also say that the European carry-on size is smaller than the American size and if you have to gate-check, you’ve lost the carry-on advantage (ask me how I know this).
We’ve traveled enough to try to plan for the challenges with checked bags, and in many years of international travel this was only the second time I had a bag misplaced (the last time was my 2013 work trip to Dublin where I booked a very tight connection in LHR that involved a terminal transfer, and I learned my lesson from that experience). We took a longer (4-hour) layover in Heathrow in case of delays and to give enough time for our luggage to make it. We also try to fly Club World on the flight over for more comfort and priority luggage tags, both of which were missing from our bags, so we have to pay more attention in Seattle next time to make sure the agent tags our bags that way (for example, our priority tags on the flight home meant our bags were in the first 10 that came off of conveyor belt, which is working as intended). And we always bring two outfits and any other essentials in our European-sized carry-on. Let’s just say I was happy to get my own shampoo and sweaters and extra pair of shoes. Nothing I had was “worth” much of anything, but it’s just nice to have your own stuff again.
Luggage in hand — in trunk, actually — it was time to bid goodbye to Rouen and drive to Pays d’Auge, but first… We made a stop on the drive at the Abbaye de Jumièges, one in a series of abbeys ruined during the French Revolution. Truly, one could spend multiple days biking or driving through these little towns on the Seine, soaking up the late summer sun. But as we were headed to the cider portion of our trip, we chose just one set of ruins to visit, and this was an impressive one.
What happened? As in Rouen, France is Old and Things Are Complicated. The French Revolution happened and The People used many of the buildings as stone quarries. Was everyone Catholic? Pretty much. And are most folks still culturally Catholic? Pretty much. But it’s complicated.
We could have lingered for hours in Jumièges, but we had to ferry across the Seine to move towards the most anticipated part of our trip — cider!
I’m not really sure how to describe this stop on our trip — idyllic doesn’t quite capture it because though it was beautiful and charming it was also composed of working people and farms, primary schools, Lidls in the middle of fields, swimming complexes, and bread vending machines (yes, really). Of every stop on the trip, this was, hands-down, our favorite, and if you’ve ever wanted to stay in the French countryside, we can’t recommend this lovely farm enough. Mannetot was a huge highlight of the trip.
This is the point in the blog when I feel compelled to defend the French writ-large and remind folks that if you try, you’ll do fine. In fact, our host, Maylis, and her husband were a perfect example of if you make an effort, you’ll be rewarded. One spoke a fair amount of English and one basically none, but it was no bother. When we returned back from the adventures of our day, we’d call Bonsoir! across the large courtyard and perhaps chat a bit. They were curious about Seattle and we were curious about their farm. With some extra gestures and seeking for simpler adjectives to make our conversations flow on. Normandy in particular is set up for the English-speaking tourist given its proximity to the UK and the D-Day history. Get out there and say Bonjour! to the French. Don’t be an ass and you’ll do just fine.
So this was someone’s most exciting part of the trip — Sergio painstakingly researched cideries and distilleries and tours and tastings and put together a lovely itinerary for our time in Pays d’Auge. As with champagne, Calvados (apple brandy) can only be called such if it is from a certain geographic area and follows a strict set of guidelines. You can feel the history and tradition in the way ciders are manufactured here, from the oaken barrels to the tilting-into-the-pond buildings with 12th century churches just across the pond. Cider apple trees are cleared of lower branches to allow cows to graze and fertilize the ground outside of harvest time. Pays d’Auge drips with history and must and orchard dogs and narrow country lanes and cool tasting rooms with recently washed floors. Given my liver disease I was not partaking in alcohol on this trip, but if you give me a book and some shade, I’m content to read for as long as possible.
I can’t tell you how much this guy was in his element. He gets legit so excited that he starts to take selfies with apple trees! I… do not share the same enthusiasm for trees that Sergio has, but there is something lovely to see your partner nerd out on things that matter to him. At a few stops he found a kindred spirit who wanted to dive deep into the nuances of production and fermentation. As someone who can get a little impatient, I’m proud to say we bought our quota of bottles we could take home duty-free and Sergio could live out his dream of being a cider maker for a few days.
Let’s take a quick break and talk food! It doesn’t take much investigation to find fantastic French food no matter the town, and this trip was no exception. Outside of Paris food was quite affordable, and the plats du jour are the easiest way to sample what’s fresh. Normandy is filled with cider and cheese, but also fresh seafood, game, and their take on fish and chips. I don’t think we’ve ever eaten poorly in France, though it can be a bit of an adjustment to eat at the French pace (slooooooooooooowly).
We’re certainly not foodie foodie folks, but we appreciate a simple, well-crafted meal. It was easy to pick-up fresh food to prepare in our rental kitchens, as well as fresh meat, veggies, and pasta to make a light dinner after a day of sightseeing. Lunch as your main meal is always a fantastic choice in Europe — you’ll get a better deal at a nicer restaurant and you’ll get more of a pass on your attire. We did have one fancy schmancy dinner out and chose a restaurant right on the border of Normandy and Brittany for some culinary variety.
There were also some interesting historical sites in Pays d’Auges too! The grandest of these was the shrine and relics of St. Therese in Liseux. I had encountered her writings in Story of a Soul a few years ago and was very interested to see what draws a young person to the religious life (the book was just ok, to be honest). But what a unique church!
Our third base town for the trip was Bayeux, the first French city liberated during D-Day. Bayeux did have more tourists than our first stop by a country mile, and I for one wasn’t thrilled to bump into obnoxious Americans and Brits again. But given the region’s history, I welcome travel. With the end of WWII almost eighty years behind it, it’s critical that we understand the implications of fascism today and don’t take democracy for granted.
Just as you will never forget visiting a concentration camp, you’ll be changed when you visit the beaches of Normandy and imagine the experience of Allied soldiers in 1944.
We live free today because they paid the ultimate price when they fought and died for us.
My grandpa served in WWII, and so did his brothers, one of them dying in the Pacific. My grandma’s two older brothers served; one was killed in France not long after D-Day in the nearby city of Orleans. I think of the sadness my grandma must have felt when she learned that her brother had died. I wonder what he felt. As he crossed the English Channel, did he have a premonition that this was it — that he wouldn’t return home, or turn twenty-five, or go on to marry or have a family?
Each time I see a plane from this era, I think of my sweet and gentle grandpa and that if not for the grace of God — and bombing runs in the dark instead of broad daylight — he himself might not have come home and I wouldn’t be here today. When you look at the wonky propellers, the canvas seals, the photos of men in fur hats and fur-lined jackets to protect them from the bitter cold, it’s hard not to feel overwhelming sadness. Because of course they were scared. They must have been terrified! And they were just a few years past childhood fighting for what was right and good and true.
It is solemn to stand on the bluff above the beaches and to imagine in your mind’s eye what it was like to board a box of a landing craft and jump into the icy water for a run to the beach. The physical remains of the German fortifications are still viewable along the coast — as well as the Allied ships sunk to form an artificial harbor at Arromanches.
It’s peaceful now, though a little windswept on the coast.
The many sites in the area include subdued German cemetaries. To walk through one of those cemetaries was also heartbreaking — that near the end of the war, the Germans killed in action were likely only sixteen or seventeen years old. My grandma once told me that my grandpa’s mom wouldn’t speak to him for a period of time after the war when she learned he was on bombing missions over northern Germany, where some of our extended family still lived. Cousins killing cousins.
Any time I hear a world leader speak too glowingly about war — let alone Hitler — my heart aches. I was just there, standing on that bluff and looking down towards the ocean. It wasn’t that long ago that US Army Rangers scaled those cliffs hand over hand, that young men were blown to bits by landmines or drowned in the tides if they did’t climb fast enough. Stand in silence in one of these places and tell me your heart doesn’t ache.
Would it be a trip to Europe without one tourist trap? Good news — we went to Mt. St. Michel and we found all of them there. The original abbey was started in the 900s on a small island just on the border of Normandy and Brittany and has been a pilgrimage site for centuries (but now with eco busses on the causeway and selfie sticks!). To be fair it sounds like the town outside of the abbey and monastery was touristy AF from its inception, so I guess there have always been obnoxious tourists.
This was the other site that you must buy tickets ahead of time if you want to tour the top of the island. You can certainly stop in the shops and restaurants and walk along the ramparts, but the history of the church and monastery is quite incredible (and slightly less crowded) than the rest of the island. Many people do Mt. St. Michel as a day trip, so we went later in the day after the main rush had ended, which made for a beautiful sunset on the walk to dinner.
We had an 8am flight out of CDG on our way home so we opted to spend a day driving back from Mt. St. Michel, which was about five hours straight through, but we decided to go at a more leisurely pace. What luck we had this trip when it came to weather — temperatures in the high sixties with one day of rain.
As always, more time in CDG is better than less time, and with a 5am wake-up time I was glad we stayed at an aiport hotel that was a 3-minute train ride from Terminal 2. Sergio was a champ and navigated back to the car rental return as I started getting everything perfectly packed for our journey home.
And of course this time the luggage was the third and fourth bags off the belt. The irony.
Au revoir, Sarah
