La Maison du Vert

Time has flown at the vegetarian hotel I have been staying at, tucked away in the gentle folds of Normandy's hills. Home-grown produce, wonderful food, berry picking, vocal roosters, a chiming church, and a cute cat that looks like he harbours peanuts in his cheeks, and of course the wonderful hosts Debbie and Daniel, have been just a few of the highlights I have experienced in this lovely home. What a treat it has been, I know I will miss Debbie's potent punch, and all the lovely monkeys that helped me enjoy it :-)

Impressions of Honfleur

After visiting Rouen, it seemed only fair to continue along the Impressionist's route, to a small little town unscathed by the war, where Eugène Boudin (Monet's teacher) and Erik Satie (French composer and pianist) were born. What touched me about the latter was his affair with Renoir's muse, Suzanne Valadon, who after their first night together asked her to marry him. When she left him six months later, he described the heartbreak as "nothing but an icy loneliness that fills the head with emptiness and the heart with sadness". Honfleur also has the largest church made out of wood in France. A daytrip filled with cider served in soup bowls, narrow cobbled streets, crêpes for main and dessert, silly hitchhikers and just your general prettiness overload.

Gazing maven ponders..

Buttella.. seriously? Thank you frenchies, I'm loving you more and more each day!

Jumièges Abbey

Founded in the 7th Century, burnt to the ground by Vikings, consecrated by William the Conqueror, stripped of its stone by French revolutionaries, and now that is left stands impressive and eerily silent. The beautiful husk holding so many centuries of so much faith.

Keeping it simple

Some interesting things I have come across in the countryside: backyard beehives, larger-than-life-but-soft-as-a-teddy poochers, apple orchard cycle trails, tree chapels, curious cows and plant-blanketed homes. H.D Thoreau makes more and more sense over here ~ "As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler; solitude will not be solitude, poverty will not be poverty, nor weakness weakness."

The romance of Rouen