A Taste of Normandy

Normandy may just be two hours from Paris, but it's worlds apart.

When I lived in Paris as a kid, my parents rented a weekend house just a few miles from Dieppe in Varengeville. I had only been back in Normandy once in the years (and years and years) that have passed. So when an opportunity presented itself to head back there, I jumped on it.

When I visited the house, absolutely nothing had changed apart from the type of cows in the adjacent field. Same hundred-year-old brick house that I had adorned with neon daisy stickers that, it turned out, didn't peel off without taking the wall plaster with them.

Even the neighbor was the same. And fifty years later, she still remembered the Americans who had lived across the street.

Welcome to the French countryside.

My stroll down memory lane continued when we visited the Chapel Saint-Dominique, perched on a hill overlooking the ocean in the same tiny town, to see the stain glass windows cubist painter George Braque had created in the 1950s. They were even more stunning than I had remembered.

1280px-0_Varengeville-sur-Mer_-_Église_S

After a long morning of reminiscing, where better to end up than in the town of Pourville, located just a couple of miles away?

Not convinced?

Can you say oysters by the sea?

Not exactly Paris, is it?