For our birthdays, the boyf and I decided to go on a mini trip to Normandy. We were looking for something closeby since we would only be gone for three days, and we had already said a few times how varied visiting Normandy would be, so there we went! The weather was absolutely horrible (cold, rainy, cold, cloudy…) and I didn't like it A BIT, but we had so much fun! As we thought, Normandy has such a variety in things to do! Here are some reasons why you will love visiting Normandy.
The activities
There is so much to see even if you don't like
nature or war history (see below). We for example also visited Bayeux (for its
famous tapestry) and the lovely old harbor Honfleur. We climbed all to
the top of Honfleur, where you could get a view on the Bridge of
Normandy, and we passed the Naturospace. We also visited the larger city
Rouen, where we came across churches and a cathedral, lots of typical
Normandy houses and where we visited the Panorama XXL, a 32 meter high
mixture of paintings, drawings and digital photography of the Great
Barrier Reef. We were happy we got the prices at a reduced rate, because
we though 9,50€ was a bit too much, but it's still impressive to see.
A big con of visiting Normandy: if you don't have a car it's super
difficult to visit the area, because everything is so spread around.
The nature
Normandy is not really known for having this one city-trip city where you can stay for days without having to leave. To me it's more a sum of tons of (smaller and larger) cities all spread throughout fields or close to the sea. I loved seeing the cliffs of Étretat and being able to walk around it for a bit. I also loved walkig at the beach (even though the weather was FAR of being beach proof).
The war history
We visited the impressive Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial over at Omaha Beach (one of the landing beaches of the Normandy Invasion) and the war museum at Caen. The museum was quite expensive (19,80€!), but we spent over 2 and a half hours in it and then visited the bunker too, so it was definitely worth it. You get a full overview of everything that led to WW II and the way they present it is refreshing. There's also enough video where you can sit down to rest your legs a bit too, so that's definitely a plus!
The food
We stayed at this hotel which also has a restaurant and OMG eating at that restaurant was one of the best travel decisions we have ever made! Eating in the same building as your hotel has the big advantage of not having to care about who would be driving home later that evening. If we would not have stayed in the hotel, and we would still have eaten there, we would certainly have returned just to eat there again! Yep, I absolutely LOVED the food at Le Saint Pierre! I got the Carpaccio de magret de canard, Tartare de saumon and the Millefeuille croustillant and I'm still dreaming about it: it was simple, but/and unexpectetly good! Just a shame we couldn't return on Sunday because they're closed on Sundays!
Other restaurants we tried during our trip were good too (we actually never came across bad restaurants) but that one was really good. ;)
Overall, we really loved our stay at Normandy. Next time we're going we would probably only go if the weather is good (I seriously hated the cold!), and we would probably stay at our hotel again (not only for the food though, but the restaurant would be 75% of the reason we would stay there ;) )
Have you ever been to Normandy?😃
xo Noor
Labels: Road trip, Traveling
