Honfleur

 We sail to Honfleur in the morning.

Everyone goes to the top deck of the ship as we approach and sail under the Normandy Bridge.  It spans the river linking LaHavre and Honfleur.  It was the longest cable-stayed bridge in the world when it opened in 1995.

Quite impressive.

Today it is the last bridge to cross the Seine before it empties into the English Channel.

By afternoon we arrived in the town of Honfleur.  Its name is Scandinavian, meaning the shelter of Hon, a Viking warlord.  For more than a thousand years, sailors have enjoyed this port's ideal location.

Strategically positioned, Honfleur guarded Paris from a naval attack up the Seine.

The town was a favorite of 19th century Impressionists who were captivated by Honfluer's unusual light--the result of the river meets the sea setting.  The 19th-century artist Eugene Boudin lived and painted in Honfleur, attracting Monet and other artists from Paris.   It was Boudin who introduced Monet to the practice of painting outside.

The skinny houses were built for the town's fishermen around 1700.  The port was once crammed with fishing boats, but now harbors sailboats.

Samuel de Champlain sailed from Honfleur in 1603 to North America, where he founded Quebec City in Canada.  The town honors him with this bronze bust on what was once the entry gate to the town.

We walked the quaint cobblestone streets of the old town.

St. Catherine Church replaced an earlier stone church that was destroyed in the Hundred Years' War.  It is entirely built with wood as the town's money was used to fortify the town walls.  In the last months of WWII, a bomb fell through the church's roof but didn't explode.

Inside the church, the ceiling looks like the hull of an upside-down ship as it was the boat-builders who constructed the building.  The oak columns were prepared as if the wood was meant for a ship--soaked in seawater for seven years and then dried for seven years.

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The pipe organ, from 1772 but rebuilt in 1953.  The pews are designed to flip so that one can face the music during concerts that are held in here.

The Bell Tower of the church was built away from the church to avoid placing too much stress on the wooden church's roof.

The salt warehouses were built in 1670 with stones from the city walls. They could store up to 10,000 tons of salt, which was then used to preserve cod for a longer time.

The oldest church of Honfleur, the Saint-Etienne church, now is the Honfleur Marine museum.

You can see Honfleur is now getting very busy with tourists.

We have been very fortunate to do most of our walking tours in the morning.  Today, we are exploring Honfleur in the afternoon and it's a bit uncomfortable for us to be in such crowds during this pandemic.  So it's back to the ship for us to rest up as we will be doing an all-day tour to the D-Day Beaches tomorrow.

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