The boats have probably changed, but the rest of the old harbor is probably not that different from what it looked liked when the French sailed from here to colonize Canada

Honfleur -- back to the future

We stayed in Honfleur on the Seine estuary. It's a pretty town and the site where the French first left to colonize Canada, eventually moving some Trombley's there who passed their DNA on to a lot of us.

Ste. Catherine's Place

Our hotel room overlooked Ste.-Catherine, a massive church built just after the Hundred Years War which ended in the 15^th century. It is all wood (Stone masons were in short supply, but Honfleur had many ship builders who knew how to work in wood). We tried to go to mass there but it appeared that this was not a working church and longer despite the fact that it had gone nearly 500 years without burning down.

Detached from the church is the bell tower of Ste.-Catherine, now used as part of a museum. Here's two pictures:

and

(The clock -- like those in most French landmarks-- still tells time pretty accurately.)

Across from our hotel, a Saturday morning market sprung up. Here's a picture of some of the bread being sold. (Pietrina bought half a loaf and it turned out to be our lunch later).

City streets

Beyond that lie quaint old streets with timber framed houses (quite common throughout Normandy) Here's one called the "rue de la prison."

Ste. Leonard

Up the hill is Ste. Leonard which has a poorly kept façade:

Inside are wood carved statues:

Pont de Normandie

Also seen from our bedroom was the 1995 Normandy Bridge (Pont de Normandie) over the Seine. When it was built, it was the longest cable-stayed bridge in the world when it was built. We crossed it (twice, as it turned out). Despite paying a steep toll both ways, we had plenty of time to take pictures because a traffic jam was created when a small trailer came loose in the high winds and went wandering across the bridge.

Here's two views:

and

Where do you want to go today? Here's a few choices