Museums and More

Last Days in Honfleur

Now get ready for it:  I bought a museum pass for four museums, and we did all four of them in two days.  Got that?  FOUR museums in TWO days, all requiring an entrance fee.   We had aimed for the main museum but there was a line for tickets, which gave me tine to consider the pass - Cindy almost fell over when she saw I had purchased tickets for four museums.  But she was ever so pleased and we then began our tour of the Eugene Boudin art museum.  We thought we had never heard of this impressionist painter from Honfleur, but soon realized that we recognized his work.  The museum was on several floors and had many other impressionist artists represented who had lived and painted in Honfleur.  One painting was labeled; “The Old Streets of Honfleur” and it had been painted in the mid-1800s (and the streets were already considered old).  The amazing part was that those old streets and buildings STILL look the same – we saw many renditions of many Honfleur streets that have not changed in 150 years except perhaps for the awnings. It’s really special.

We went to the Maritime Museum later that day and to the Ethnographic Museum and the Erik Satie Museum the next day.  The Satie museum was by far my favorite – if all museums were like that I would queue to go in, no questions asked.  We were each given a pair of headphones with a sensor and then led through the various rooms of his home, each with a multimedia extravaganza of light, music, and art.  The narration was interesting and it was so cool the way the sensors worked, knowing where we were in the houses and tailoring the talk to what we were looking at.

One of the things you always know in Honfleur is the time.  There are three major churches in this little town and they all have large bell towers that strike every fifteen minutes with very loud bells on the hour.  I could hear them from every corner of the town, which was rather nice when I was lost in thought while walking along the Seine Estuary in the early mornings.  I would hear the bells and know I needed to beat feet to meet Cindy for coffee.

Our last side trip took us to Étretat where we were told there were great vistas of the famous rocks that have been carved by sea and wind. There was a great sculpture called the White Bird, which is in front of a museum dedicated to the pilots Nungesser and Coli who tried to cross the Atlantic in May of 1927. They didn’t make it and two weeks later Lindbergh did!  Naturally there are conspiracy theories galore.

We had a few more memorable meals and a lot more oysters before it was time to pack up and depart for Paris. All in all, it was a lovely stay in a beautiful town and I so enjoyed being surrounded by water and boats and the smells and sounds of the sea.  Best to all, Cindy and Wm

PS if you usually don’t bother with the links, you might want to make an exception for the Erik Satie museum link.  It’s whimsical, to say the least.