Honfleur

Honfleur is a picturesque town and harbour in the Calavados region of Normandy.  Loved by impressionist painters such as Monet.  You can see why.  It is very pretty.

The most picturesque view is around the Old Dock where there are many boats moored including old sailing ships.  The buildings around the dock are old salt warehouses where in the 1600's salt was stored under the frame of the buildings.

On the other side of the port stand rows of brightly coloured terraced house, 3 and 4 stories high that are a bit crooked and appear to hold each other up.

The dock is lined with shops and restaurants.  The cobbled stoned streets wind their way up the hill.  They are all brightly coloured and display their colourful wares out on the street.

We had two days here and we spent some time wandering around the town and also driving beyond Honfleur to explore nearby towns and beaches.

The Normandy bridge which spans the rive Seine was when it was built the longest cable stay bridge in the world.

 

Our Battlefields Tour ended with us being dropped off in Lille.  We stayed in a great hotel right in the middle of the old town opposite the main square.  Lille is the largest city in French Flanders.

We spent our time here wandering around the streets and we took a 50 min bus tour to orientate ourselves.  There are several excellent museums but after the Battlefields we felt we had done enough museums for a while.  The old town is very pretty, wide open squares.  Cobblestone streets and interesting shops, cafes and restaurants.  The Rue de la Monnaie is the most famous and busiest with lots of high end shops.  Great for window shopping.

On our final morning we had to collect our hire car from the Eurostar Terminal.  That was easy enough.  We located the car in the multi storey carpark without any problem but finding the way out was a nightmare.  We kept going around and around.  We could see the exit but we just couldn't find the way to it.  Eventually we got there and put our ticket into the machine and the boom gate didn't go up.  The attendant came and opened the boom.  Presumably we had taken too long to arrive at the exit and our ticket had expired.

The 3 gold figures in the last photo atop the Hotel de Ville represent the 3 areas, or departments.

 

Battlefields Tour

Still on the Battlefields we did 2 more days.  We spent a night in Ypres and witnessed the Last Post being played at the Menin Gate nightly at 8pm.  In April next year it will have been played 30,000 times.  It has played every night since the end of WW1 except during WW2 and as soon as that was over they were playing it again. It was very moving indeed.

 

Battlefields Tour

The following day we commenced our Battlefields Tour.  Our guide and driver John collected us from our hotel along with another couple.  So,only a very small group.

Day 1 We visited the village of Pozieres where 23,000 men were killed or wounded in 6 weeks. We went to see a 30 metre deep mine crater at Lochnagar, the Thiepval Memorial and trenches at the Newfoundland Memorial Park, Beaumont-Hamel.  Finishing the day at Villers-Bretaneux.  We went to the Victoria school which houses a wonderful Australian museum and then the Adelaide Cemetary where Australia's unknown soldier was before being reinterred in the War Memorial in Canberra.  What I was most impressed with was the beauty of these sites, how well maintained they are, how many people visit them.  Every site was filled with people.  There is a printed record for every grave, so it is if you are there to find a particular grave, you just look it up in the book and it pinpoints the location for you.

Our day finished in the lovely little village of Corbie where we checked into a fabulous B&B Le Macassar.

 

Viva La France

We took the Eurostar from Ashford to Paris.  It was nearly a disaster as we had tickets for a month earlier than the date we were travelling.  Not sure how that happened.  It's not like we didn't check them when they were issued.  Eurostar were very good about it.  They sitting printed new tickets for us and we were able to board the train, phew.  Arriving in Paris though, we had to purchase new train tickets for the journey to Amiens.

We got to Amiens late at night, about 10pm but with daylight saving it was still just light.  Our hotel was very near the train station which was great.

The following day we explored Amiens.  I went to the hairdresser for a colour and cut which was great fun as my French isn't very good and no-one there spoke English.  We got by, and I came out with a nice haircut and colour.

Every night the cathedral is transformed into a spectacular sound and light show.  The beautiful figures carved into the stone are brought to life in colour.