Pitch N' Y'all: Ah, le France

We had two days in Le Havre, France on May 11 and 12. Ellen had been to Paris as a teenager, but J and I had never been, discounting the quick hop from Monaco. We landed in Le Havre on the Normandy coast and stayed in this little area. Day one saw some exploring, and we hopped the bus to Honfleur to see the inspiration for many of Monet's impressionist paintings. Yep, it's a pretty, quaint country, but it was overrun by tourists, but this was a twist: they were French tourists, so even with tons of tourists, they were local in the sense that they were native Frenchmen rather than Brits, Americans, Germans, or other tourists. That in itself indicated to me that the place was genuine. A couple shots below show the beauty of Honfleur which was about an hour from Le Havre. Most of the buildings in Honfleur were hundreds of years old with heavy wooden timbers like you see in Germany.

We took a picnic lunch from Le Havre to Honfleur and found a little park area near a cathedral and had a cute little snack of baguette sandwiches, some chocolate, beer, and the local specialty, cidre. I know it as cider, but here apples and pears are prevalent, so even though most folks think of wine as the provence of France, here the strength was cidre, so that's what we had. Good, too, and cheap, and not too high in ABV.

Day two in Le Havre, we went to the modern art museum. It wasn't particularly modern, but it had a good representation of Monet, Manet, and other 19th and 20th century French artists. After that, we found the bike rental spot and rented–for relatively few euro, too–bikes to ride around the oceanfront and town. My bike felt kinda slow, and the tires were a bit low, but whatever. We headed up the beach and up the hill to where the local circus was set up. J looked at the llamas (low budget circus, perhaps), then tried to pet a young Chihuahua before it's momma chased him off. Once at the top of the hill above the city, we headed back down pretty dang quick and saw that the majority of the shops and restaurants were closed on Sunday. Oh, well, we had a good dinner on the ship and a heavy sleep after a good bit of riding for Ellen, Jasper, and me.

Next up is Belgium. To state that I'm stoked is selling it a bit short, because I'm excited beyond words about revisiting the place Ellen and I went for a last hurrah before 9/11, before having a child, and really getting to know the beers of this country. I've got about two weeks worth of plans, so we're going to visit Bruges and perhaps Brussels in addition to our docking point of Antwerp. It's projected to rain and be cold, but what the hey: there's lambics, dubbels, triples, and quads out there.

Until then, ciao.