Parislog 53
September 3, 2006

On the second day of our trip we drove over to Etretat. On the way we stopped at a little tiny town called Yport, walked down to the beach and picked out a beach stone. The beaches are not sand at all but rather pebbles. It is really hard to walk on them because they are all round and roll constantly under your feet as you are stepping. I really thought for sure that I was going to end up on my keister quite a few times. Both A* and I picked out a rock to take home with us. Mine has a hole on one side with a little crystal bed inside. I love things that sparkle.

I also got a chance to get a closer look at the way the buildings were put together in this area. There are houses with a patterned stone face on them. The stone is the same stuff that you find on the beaches and it is used in a very beautiful way. Inside each square made with mortar is a chunk of this silica rock and then sometimes around that is a pattern using red and yellow bricks. It is very unique.

We then went over to Etretat. In Etretat we went to a museum in the house of a very well known French writer, Maurice LeBlanc. He wrote a series about Arsène Lupin, the gentleman burglar. The house has been transformed into a walk through the world of both author and of character and through a narration on a headset you follow some of the exploits of both. It is a blast even though I personally had no reference for the author, it was done in such an engaging way that it didn’t matter. I might even go and read one of the stories. Outside, I got in trouble with A* for walking on the grass while I was taking a picture of a flower. I didn’t see any signs and so I got really flip and was joking around about being a bold American who does what she wants. We walked out and there on the entrance kiosk was a little batch of signs in the international language of pictures including one that indicated not to walk on the grass. Oops.

We then went to lunch as by then we were all getting a bit famished. We walked up and down a couple of streets reading menus going back and forth over a few of them until we settled on Le Bicorne. We went in to a beautiful room with wood paneling all the walls and the windows open wide. The napkins were squares with origami folds that made it look like a flower. Each one had a flower sitting in the middle. After choosing our meals we had to wait what seemed like a really long time and I was starting to get a little antsy and was definitely ravenous by then. At last, however, the food finally arrived and the reason for the wait became abundantly clear. Each plate was a master artwork. I ordered a toasted goat cheese entrée that was exquisitely browned on top and warm and runny on the inside. The first bite was hard to take though because I didn’t want to ruin the sculpture, so instead I took a photo. When the main dishes arrived lo and behold, it was another piece of art. I had salmon and asparagus drowning gently with a scrumptious Hollandaise sauce. There was a little puree of potato and maybe spinach that was divine also. I didn’t order any dessert but the couple and their child at the next table did and again, art. The little girls eyes grew to an immense size as she saw this plate of sweet stuff arrive in front of her and I swear it looked bigger than her. She tackled it with gusto and could barely make a dent. It was too cute.

After lunch we headed down to the beach and the famous cliffs. They are made of chalk that gleams on a sunny day and we had a sunny day. Yeah! Monet and Delacroix have painted here and Alexandre Dumas and Victor Hugo came also. We walked up on the top of the cliffs and looked down those escarpments at great risk. There were signs everywhere telling of the danger both above and below of falling rocks. Standing at the very edge is not recommended but sometimes you just want the photo. There is one chunk that is separate from the cliff called the needle, which plays a big role in one of the books of Maurice Leblanc. From up on top of the cliffs you can get a spectacular view of it and you can also walk down a path into another chunk that is partially separated from the cliff. Don’t get bumped on the way though. It’s a long way down. We sat for a while near the edge, well I did, A* and I* sat a little further back, and we just enjoyed the view. It really was incredible, the white against the blue and the lush green grass.

We stopped in an old market full of souvenir shopping and then headed off to see the Benedictine Palace in Fécamp.

Now I thought that we would be going to the site of the monks and that that was where the liquor was made but in fact this palace was only built in 1876 but a man who found the lost recipe in a book an ancestor had bought. The original recipe of the monks was lost to time until Louis Legrand, having found it decided to see if he could recreate it and a success was created. He built this palace to house the brewery but also to be a tribute to gothic and renaissance buildings and art and it is a marvel to behold. From the minute you step into the building you are inundated with the perfume of the liquor and it never leaves you even to the very end where you get a sample of what you have smelled the entire time. They aren’t cheap with the amount either. It was enough to make my legs tingle, and it was tasty.

Then we went back to the gite for the night, had a little supper at the long table with an elderly couple who had just finished their meal but stayed for the conversation. They were a hoot, very animated and entertaining. I quickly became completely lost however when the conversation became to fast and too layered. There were points when all 4 people were talking at the same time. I don’t know how they had a conversation talking and hearing at the same time. I can’t even do that in English.