We are on the cruise ship AmaDante, run by the river cruise company AmaWaterways. Although Kevin and I have been on many overnight ferries with cabins (and of course spent many nights on our own sailboat), this is the first time I've ever been on a cruise ship. The ship has 71 staterooms and can accommodate 140 passengers, but on this cruise there are only about 120 passengers. Our staterooms are surprisingly spacious and have great views looking out over the water.
Here's a peek at what the staterooms look like:
Just above us on the ship's top level is the sundeck, which has a walking track, shaded lounge chairs, and a small hot tub.
The lounge and bar area has plenty of seating and nice views out the windows.
For meals you can choose to eat a la carte in the lounge/bar area, or you can get the full menu on the dining deck. The menu each day varies and there is usually a choice of appetizer, salad, soup, entree and dessert. I can see why they need a walking track on the sundeck!
The food has been good and the service is great. We keep coming back to the same table so that we can sit in Alex's section - he is by far our favorite waiter.
But enough about the ship, what adventures have we been up to?? Well our cruise is a seven-night tour of the River Seine as it winds its way through the Normandy region and back to Paris. Our first port was the charming village of Les Andelys. In the background you can see the Château Gaillard, built by Richard I the Lionheart at the end of the 12th century.
Our tour bus took us up the hill so that we could hike to the castle and explore the ramparts, but because it was demolished in 1599 it's really just a ruin so the best part about the hike was the great view of town down below.
Our next port of call included the towns of Honfleur and Le Havre. Honfleur is a beautiful port town that retains a lot of its medieval charm. The cobblestones and half-timbered houses transport you back in time almost instantly. Half-timbered construction was used here because forests were plentiful in this region, while stone quarries were not. A skeleton of timber beams would be raised and then the space between each beam would be filled in with earth, sand, and straw and then coated with lime and clay leaving the wooden beams exposed.
Kevin and I had been to Honfleur before but not with a tour. Our tour guide was from this part of France and she shared a lot of local knowledge that we missed on our first trip here. One of the "fun facts" we learned was that Claude Monet's teacher Eugène Boudin was born in Honfleur. Although Boudin didn't quite make the cutoff for being considered an "impressionist" painter, he was one of the first artists to paint en plein air (meaning outdoors) and this technique became a hallmark of the Impressionist movement once he introduced his pupil Monet to it. Another fun Honfleur fact is that the picturesque tall houses lining the harbor's Vieux Bassin (Old Port) were actually constructed in two pieces. The lower half of each house was built first, with the front door facing the harbor. Then the upper halves were added years later (sometimes even in a slightly different style or different colored materials) with their front doors facing the higher-level street behind the building. If you look closely at the photo, you can probably find the dividing lines between the two halves of each structure.
When Kevin and I were in Honfleur in 2014, we had only had a few hours to walk around and grab dinner. So we missed an entire section of town, where the old wooden church of Sainte-Catherine is located. It is one of the oldest wooden churches in France, constructed in the late 15th century after the end of the Hundred Years' War. When this church was built the main industries in town had to do with fishing and shipbuilding. So the shipwrights and carpenters built the wooden church in the best way they knew how -- double naves shaped like two upside-down ship hulls.
Because of the fire danger from lightning strikes, the bell tower for the church was actually constructed as a separate building across the square.
Back at the ship, we got ready for our afternoon excursions to see the sights of Le Havre -- a bus/walking tour for Delaine, and a biking tour for Kevin and me. Le Havre is the second biggest port in France (after Marseille) and a major port city for all of Europe. While Marseille on the Mediterranean handles half a million more shipping containers per year, Le Havre is a key link to the Atlantic sea trade.
Both tours saw many of the same sights. Unlike Honfleur, the city of Le Havre was heavily bombed during WWII in September 1944 by allied forces to oust the Nazi stronghold there and capture the port. The bombings destroyed 85% of the city center and unfortunately there were many civilian casualties. During the period from 1945 to 1964 the city was rebuilt but in a very modern style; there is a lot of concrete and glass, and -- depending on your viewpoint -- not a lot of charm. Many of the newer buildings are extremely modernist in style, almost brutalist-looking, which is why the town has occasionally been called "Stalingrad-sur-Mer". This is the war monument near the town hall. You can see the surrounding buildings look quite different than the quaint half-timbered houses of Honfleur!
Unfortunately, partway through the bike tour it started pouring. We ended up taking shelter (along with the folks from the bus tour) in St. Joseph's Church. This very modern church almost looks like a lighthouse on the outside, with a unique octagonal-shaped central belltower rising 107 meters into the sky. The interior looks unlike any other Catholic church I've seen, with harsh concrete and metal angles and small but prolific stained glass windows rising all the way up the tower. Again, a big contrast to the wooden church we saw in Honfleur that morning!
We actually spent a second night in Le Havre so that we could see more of Normandy. Once again we split up, with Delaine going to Omaha Beach and the American Cemetery at Colleville-sur-Mer. Here is one of the monuments on the beach, dedicated to the Allied Forces who landed on D-Day - June 6th 1944.
Notice the wreaths below that monument. Many American soldiers and their descendants bring a wreath or some kind of remembrance when they visit this solemn site. One of our fellow cruise ship passengers brought a photo of his dad in uniform and laid a wreath at the cemetery. Although his dad was one of the lucky ones who survived, one of his final wishes when he passed was for his son to bring this photo so that a small piece of his memory could be with some of the friends he lost that day.
Kevin and his mom also have a very strong connection to the Normandy Beaches and D-Day invasion history. On D-Day, Delaine's uncle Bruce was a paratrooper with the 82nd Airborne who jumped from a plane and landed not far from here. He survived the war, and thanks to his son (Delaine's cousin) we were able to read a treasure trove of his letters home that he wrote during his time serving here and elsewhere on the European front. Delaine's uncle was fortunate to have survived, but he did lose several good friends during the course of the war. Knowing his story of the loss of his friends and reading his letters made visiting the American Cemetery that much more meaningful.
Kevin and I had visited Omaha Beach on a previous trip, so we did not join in the Normandy Beach excursions this time. Instead there was a separate tour that took us to a few smaller towns in the Pays d'Auge region of Normandy that we'd never been to before. Our first stop of the morning was the well-to-do town of Deauville.
Deauville is a town filled with ostentatious houses, horse stables, elegant hotels, and a casino. Back in the 1860s when it first became accessible by train, this town grew in to a beachgoing spa haven where the wealthy Parisians came in the summer to see and be seen. In the 1920s the town built a long wooden boardwalk along the beach called the Promenade des Planches. The beach here became even more famous when it was used as a filming location for several well-known French films, including "Un Homme et une Femme" ("A Man and a Woman").
We also went to the pretty towns of Beaumont-en-Auge and Pont l'Évêque, but the highlight of our day was stopping in at the Busnel Calvados distillery, where they make both Calvados (apple brandy) and Pommeau (a fortified aperitif made with Calvados).
France's Normandy region is known for its 800 varieties of apples. Here at Busnel the Calvados is AOC (Appellation d'Origine Contrôlée) meaning they source all the apples for their brandy from the Calvados département. Similar to the way that sparkling wine can only be labeled Champagne if it originates from the region of Champagne in France, only apple brandy sourced from fruits from this Calvados region can officially be labeled "Calvados".
After learning all about the distillation and aging process, we did of course get to sample both Calvados and Pommeau. Both were excellent. À votre santé!
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