Honfleur, France

 Thursday July 31, 2025 

Today was our final port day (and our last day on this cruise). We docked in Le Havre, France. You have a few options when you dock in this port.

1) You can go to Paris. This is a three hour bus ride each way! Unless you've never been to Paris and don't think you'll ever return, the three hours each way makes this a bad choice. You'd probably only have 2 or 3 hours in Paris and that just isn't enough!

2) You can go to the Normandy area and look at the war stuff.

3) You can stay in Le Havre, which seems more like an industrial port town.

4) You can go to Honfleur which is a beautiful, picturesque town that is full of historical buildings.

As you can guess from my descriptions, we chose #4!

If you take a taxi it was going to be 80 Euros each way for the 30 minute trip (as noted on the sign by the taxi line). We booked ahead with Bee Le Havre (a shuttle bus service) who picked us up right at the cruise ship, drove us to Honfleur and dropped us off back at the cruise ship  28 Euros each for the return trip. This was a definite cost saver over a taxi!  As an added benefit we had commentary on the bus on the way there telling us interesting facts about the area.

Honfleur is a pretty town which has existed in written records since 1025. It is suggested that it was founded by the Vikings in the 800s. Honfleur has  a few claims to fame besides being charming and picturesque.

1) Samuel de Champlain set sail from here to found Quebec. As a Canadian this one was interesting to us at least!

2) Many impressionist artists were inspired to paint by the town's beauty including Claude Monet. I can see why! Multiple times in the day as we turned a corner and looked down another lane I said to Steve, "Oh Steve, look at that!"

The shuttle company dropped us off close to the harbour (which we admired) and at the start of the town. The first place we headed to was Sainte Catherine's Church. The church that stands there now is a unique wooden church that they started building in 1460 to replace the stone church that was destroyed in the 100 years war. One of the things that surprised me is that you could light candles in this church with actual flames. It felt like a recipe for disaster in a church built completely of wood. Many churches we visited had candles you could light that weren't with real flames. It was built by the town's shipbuilders which is evident when you look at it. Here are some photos of this unique church!

The wooden church has a separate bell tower which is across the street. According to the commentary on the bus, this is so that if the bell tower gets struck by lightning the whole church won't burn down! 

We paid a few Euros to go into the museum in the bell tower. 

There were a lot of interesting things to see in the bell tower, but you couldn't see the bell. You could hear it though. The bell is up above my head behind me somewhere!

After this we basically walked around the town admiring the buildings, the shops, the restaurants and the many art galleries. The art galleries in this town were interesting to me because it is rare that I see art that appeals to me in commercial galleries... but in this town there was so much art that I would have considered putting in my home (if I were rich of course!)

Here are a few photos trying to show you how beautiful the town is... but not really totally capturing it! What really stood out to me were the style of houses. They are considered thatched cottages and half-timbered houses. This town was largely not destroyed in WWII so maintains its medieval feel.

Okay, I'm going to stop. You get the idea. Just know Steve took a million more photos of this town!

The other part of the town which was quite picturesque was the harbour. This harbour, apparently, inspired many impressionist painters.

Another thing on my list for our only stop in France was to find a patisserie and have a lemon tart. We wandered a bit looking in the bakeries we came across and I didn't find anything that piqued my interest. So Steve did a google search and came up with "Pollen". We quickly found it and I enjoyed (REALLY ENJOYED!) a lemon tart and Steve had a raspberry coconut tart. I know I say this often, but this truly was the best lemon tart I've ever tasted!

After a bit more walking we headed back to our bus for the ride back to the ship. As we pulled out of the parking lot the bus sounded weird (kind of like it was stuck in first gear), but we continued on so I didn't think much of it.

Then as we were starting down the highway the bus started wobbling from side to side and then stopped. Not sure what happened... but that bus wasn't going anywhere. They quickly remedied the situation and brought another bus to pick us up. I would say the wait was less than 30 minutes. This didn’t stop people from complaining and over-reacting. The tour operators did the best they could in an unexpected situation. People need to have a little more compassion and tolerance for the unexpected.

Here I am patiently waiting for the bus:

Here are the people who thought it might be more comfortable to wait outside in the rain...

We arrived back at the cruise ship with plenty of time to spare (hours even). It was our last night on the boat so we packed our bags, had one final delicious dinner and watched Nik Page do another show in the Princess Theatre.

Tomorrow we get off the ship and head to Belgium!