Honfleur/Le Havre/Etretat (15-16April11)

The day after we returned from the South of France trip, we drove 2 hours up north with Charmaine to Honfleur for a lunch at Sa.Qua.Na, our favorite restaurant in France. I have to mention this place again because I love it too much. They offer a menu of either 5 courses for 65€ or 9 courses for 95€ whereby the entire table has to be served the same menu. However, I can safely tell you that the 5-course menu is more than enough. Both come with an amuse-bouche which is the pancake/tart-looking thing in the photo below. A weird, heavy amuse-bouche one might say, but when you put it in your mouth, you'll be utterly surprised at the lightness & fluffiness of it! The tinge of truffle aroma is just heavenly. Thus we have crowned this the single best dish of the restaurant which is to.die.for and to.crave.for. Their slow-cooked fishes and pigeons are also awesome. Do look back on my previous post (tagged Honfleur) for more descriptions made during my 1st trip there.

Afterwards, we headed to Le Havre via a 2km-long bridge called Pont de Normandie. Le Havre, which translates simply to "the harbour or the port", is "a city of the Haute-Normandie region (declared in 2005 a UNESCO World Heritage Site) with a port that's the second busiest in France (after Marseille)". We stayed a night there but I wouldn't recommend going there at this time because much of the city is undergoing construction to make way for new tram lines. The only thing we did was to walk around the city center (where the shops and bars are) which was quite charming. You can read more about it here.

The following day, we drove another 45 minutes from Le Havre to a place called Étretat. It is best known for its cliffs, which I was most attracted to because Claude Monet illustrated them in several of his paintings! Here are 2 paintings which you can compare against my photos :) The ones on the left is called Porte d'Aval and on the right Porte d'Amont with Manneport behind it. I hope I got them right.

Left: Source [http://givernews.com/?Balade-en-normandie]
Right: Source [http://www.culture.gouv.fr/public/mistral/joconde_fr?ACTION=CHERCHER&FIELD_1=AUTR&VALUE_1=MONET%20Claude&DOM=All&REL_SPECIFIC=1&IMAGE_ONLY=CHECKED]

We "trekked" up the Porte d'Aval for a better view of the beach, the cliffs on the other side, and the town. Love it. To end the visit nicely, we had shellfishes and wine at a restaurant by the beach. The mussels were quite bad though so choose the oysters and the likes instead.