Today was our first port of call since the Azores, and we felt the impacts of getting up earlier than we had since that stop at Ponta Delgada. We tried to go to bed early last night but we were up a little later than planned, and I did not sleep well, probably anticipating getting up and getting the rental car. We had put together all of our daytime travel gear and camera equipment and packed our backpacks, and had set the wake up call for 6:30 AM.
For some reason, I woke up at about 4:30 AM and could not get back to sleep, or at least a restful sleep, probably just nodding off before the actual wake up call came in at 6:30 AM. I got showered and dressed and went down for the breakfast sandwiches while Stephanie got ready. We did not need to get off the ship by the 7:00 AM scheduled arrival time because the rental car office was not supposed to open until 8:00 AM. We did get off the ship at about 7:45 AM, trying to make sure we were at the car rental office a little early to avoid any possibility of long lines of other people renting cars there.
When we arrived at the terminal, a short walk from the ship, there were already several other couples there waiting for the rental car office to open. We all waited, and waited, and waited, and at 8:35 AM, the agent was still not there, and everyone was starting to get nervous. We were not that concerned about the time since we were not going very far today, but some of the other passengers were heading to farther away places like the D-Day beaches in Normandy, and needed to get going as soon as possible because of the distance and number of places they were visiting. In addition, we were not in a hurry because of the weather, which was really cloudy and quite cool, right around 47 Degrees. We were hoping that the clouds, which really seemed more like coastal fog, would dissipate later in the morning as forecast, so we did not need to arrive at our destinations too early while it was still cloudy
There was almost a rebellion when the rental car agent showed up, for several reasons. First off, he did not have reservation confirmations for all of the renters that were in line, some of which had apparently rented from their city office by the train station, and not from here at the port terminal office. The agent had to call someone to come and pick them up and take them to the other office because they did not have their cars here at the terminal. We were safe, our name was on the list, but we still had to wait quite a while longer while all of the paperwork for each rental was filled out by hand on a multi-copy form.
Our Rental Car With The “Good” Dent In The Door
At about 9:20 AM, we finally had our rental car, a small Renault Clio. We had been informed during the rental process that it had previous damage, a “good dent” was how it was explained. When we got to the car, we realized “good dent” really meant “big dent”, and it was on the passenger door. The door worked perfectly, but nonetheless, we were driving around in damaged goods. The whole rental process was a little less than professional, but we finally had our car and were ready to head out.
We entered the first destination into the GPS, Etretat, and headed out of the port. We did not get far before we made the first navigation error, and missed the correct roundabout turnoff, not far from the port. Luckily, the GPS rerouted us, and soon we were back on track. It took about 35 minutes for the drive to Etretat, which is a small coastal town with large white limestone cliffs on either side of the town’s stone covered beach. We did not have any issues after the first navigation mishap, but when we got to Etretat, we had difficulty finding a place to park. When we had done the internet investigation about going here, we knew there was not a lot of parking near the beach, but were surprised to see how busy it was in town for a such a cold, windy and cloudy day.
Town Of Etretat
We found a paid parking lot farther from the beach, about 1000 meters away, and parked there. There was a bathroom facility there, a “WC” in Europe, and we went over to use it. It was free, but apparently it was normally manned by an attendant, and tips were requested. However, no attendant was here now. One thing odd about this bathroom, and also for the bathrooms that had been in the port terminal, they were all clean, but had no toilet “seats”, only the porcelain bowl.
After finishing in the restroom, we headed to the beach, which was only about a ten minute walk from the parking lot. On the way, we went through the city center, which was bustling with street vendors. There were a lot of people there, and we came to realize that it was due to this being the week before Easter Sunday, we believe most Europeans are on holiday from Thursday until the Monday after Easter, so everyone was out enjoying their time off.
Stony Beach In Etretat
We headed out to the beach and decided to go up the steps and trails on the left side, facing the waters of the English Channel. The beach was completely covered with small smooth rocks, anywhere from about an inch around to about three inches. Stephanie wanted to take one home for a souvenir, but I remembered reading that it was prohibited to remove any of the stones from the beach. She thought I was pulling her leg, but we soon saw signs that looked like a rock being held by a hand inside a red circle, with a red slash across it. They also posted information in several languages about the prohibition, and the reason was for beach erosion protection. The sound of the waves crashing on the stony beach was similar to what we had heard before in Cinque Terre in Italy.
Heading Up The Cliff Access Walkway
We started up the cliff access walk, and realized that although we had been cold in town, the exercise was warming us up to the point that we needed to remove the sweaters and scarves we had put on in town. We really wished the sun had been shining, the water, green grass and white cliffs were amazing, but certainly not as pretty as on a sunny day.
There were quite a few areas that overlooked the cliffs, you could basically walk right up to the edge, there were no fences keeping you away, just your common sense. Had this been in the USA, we would have had concrete barrier walls and steel fences everywhere to avoid any stupidity and resulting litigation.
Golf Course in Etretat
There is a golf course located on this southern side of the Etretat cliffs, and we saw a few golfers, but not many. We walked quite a ways to the south, but not nearly as far as the trails went. We think you can walk for several kilometers in either direction, but we were limited on time and energy, so we took a lot of photos and headed back down to the beach.
Base Of The Northern Cliffs At The Beach
We walked along the boardwalk to the cliffs on the northern side, and went out onto the beach on that side to be at the base of the cliffs. It was pretty spectacular. We had already decided not to climb the northern side trails, you can drive up there by car, so we opted to do that later to save time and energy.
On the way back to the car parking area, we visited some of the street vendors, but did not buy anything. We were looking for some lunch and Stephanie found us a small bakery where we purchase her favorite, a French baguette, with Jamon (ham) and Fromage (cheese), two sandwiches for a total of Euro 6.00. We walked back to the car to sit inside and eat our sandwiches in the comfort of a warm car. We visited the restroom there once again, but I still used the inside toilets. There were exterior urinals on the side of the building, but I was not comfortable using them, they seemed to be only partially blocked from view by anyone that walked by.
View From The Northern Cliffs
We drove up to the northern cliffs, which is also the location of a church, which we discovered was not normally open. The lot was really full, so we parked on the side of the parking lot, not in a real “parking space”, but much better than some other drivers had done. Some appeared to have just stopped their cars and gotten out wherever they wanted, blocking in other cars. We did not stay long on that side, but while we were there, the sunshine peeked through a little, and we got a few more pictures, these with a little more color from the sunshine.
We headed back to the car and decided to drive a little farther north to another coastal town called Fecamp, which the rental car agent had said was really nice. It was about thirty minutes away, and seemed much larger than Etretat. We did made it down to the waterfront, which was really nice and scenic, but we could not find any available parking, so we did not stay.
Pointe Normandie Bridge
We selected the town of Honfleur as our next destination in the GPS, and started the drive there. Honfleur is south of Le Havre. What had seemed like improving weather about an hour ago, now seemed worse. We actually got sprinkled on a little during the 45 minute drive to Honfleur. We did cross over the somewhat new (1999) Pointe Normandie suspension bridge on our way to Honfleur, with its Euro 5.40 toll each way.
It is quite long and tall, crossing the Seine River fairly close to the English Channel. We thought we could use change for the toll, but the toll lane we entered did not seem to take change, only bills, and was not attended. We opted to use our credit card instead, and it was a snap. The credit card worked almost instantaneously, and gave us a green light and opened the gate. We may never pay tolls again with cash while driving in France, where there are a lot of toll roads.
Pointe Normandie Bridge
We arrived in Honfleur and drove in to the famous waterfront area where many famous painters like Van Gogh had spent time painting. Similar to Fecamp, parking near the town center was not to be found, it was really crowded. We drove out of the city center and found street parking about six blocks away from the scenic port area. Our car was small, but it was still a challenge to parallel park on the street in the small spaces. We had to purchase a parking ticket from a machine and place it on the dash. Unfortunately, this took all of our change, and that caused us a small issue a little later on, which we will cover later.
Honfleur, France
We headed into the city center and down to the famous port, which was not as pretty as we had thought, many of the building were painted dark gray on the outside, and combined with the cloudy skies, made everything look a little gloomy, nothing like the colorful buildings we had seen last year in Nyhavn, Copenhagen.
We found a Catholic Church and went inside to visit. It was quite old, and constructed mainly of wood. It was a little dark inside and certainly not ornate, but we enjoyed visiting today on Holy Thursday.
Catholic Church in Honfleur
We walked around town some more and found a WC (toilette). It was also attended, and seemed to require payment to use it. Unfortunately, we had used all of our change for parking, so we needed to make a small purchase to acquire some change in order to use the bathroom. We opted for some Gelato, which was Euro 2.50, so we got that same amount in change from our Euro 5.00 bill. We then headed back up the hill to the WC, but the attendant was gone. I went inside, and while I was there, several others used it and did not tip, so I did not tip either, even though the attendant had returned. These facilities are a little different than we normally see at home, the men and women go into the same room, but the urinals are behind some swinging doors, and all of the stalls with doors, used by either sex, are in the other room. Wash basins are shared by all. The attendant is usually a woman and will come in and clean urinals at any time.
Port Area of Honfleur
We were getting tired from all of the walking today, so we decided to call it a day and head back to the car for the drive back to Le Havre, about thirty minutes away.
We entered the address of the cruise terminal from the stored GPS waypoints, and we were on our way. We crossed over the Pointe Normandie Bridge, once again using our credit card for the toll, and all went well. The port of Le Havre is huge, and we seemed to drive along port facilities for a long way before we reached our turnoff to go to the cruise terminal. We needed fuel before we turned in the rental car, so we used the GPS to locate a gas station near the port terminal.
We had not seen a gas station anywhere near the port on the drive to the ship, so we had to go past the turn off for the Cruise Terminal to the gas station located by our GPS. We pulled into the “credit card” lane, apparently only specific pumps can accept credit cards at the pump. We had a little trouble, the credit card worked fine, and it requested our PIN, which was fine, but we could not figure out the “enter” button once the PIN was entered. There were only four lettered keys, and of course, I picked three wrong ones before we finally got it to work, but only after it had rejected our card a couple of times, and then temporarily locked out the pump terminal. Finally, everything finally worked, and we were able to fill the gas tank.
Our Renault Clio, Back At The Port Terminal
We were back in the cruise terminal by about 5:20 PM, and had been told we could return the rental after 5:30 PM, when the agent returned. This office is only manned in the morning for cruise rentals, and then from 5:30 PM – 8:00 PM for returns. There had even been a sign posted with those times when we rented the car this morning. However, when we got there, the sign now said 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM for returns, which had changed from this morning. Luckily, there was free wi-fi in the terminal, so we caught up on things while we waited for the attendant to return.
In checking out texts, I had gotten one this morning from my credit card about a $1060 authorization charge, they wanted confirmation it was legitimate. I had to dig through the paperwork to find that there had been a Euro 1,000 charge for a car deposit, which we knew about, but was only supposed to be Euro 900 from our email confirmation. It was only an authorization according to the agent, but we had no way to find out for sure. I still confirmed the charge via the text message reply so that my card was not cancelled.
Stephanie’s Bellini At Vines
The rental agent actually came back a little early, but did not have his credit card machine to cancel the authorization, it apparently was being done later in the city office. I was a little skeptical, but everyone who rented from here was in the same predicament, and we really had no choice.
We were tired, and glad we had made it safely back to the ship. We headed to the cabin and dropped off our gear, and then headed to Vines for some wine and tapas, and met our new friend Chris there a little later. We had met Chris the other day at Vines. We visited for a while, and then Stephanie and I headed up to the buffet for some dinner.
After dinner, we went to the Outrigger Bar on the stern of the ship and finally caught up with our favorite bartender there, Arturo, who we had not seen for some time since it was too cold out here for us to visit him when the ship was moving. The ship was still tied up to the dock, not scheduled to leave until about 7:30 PM. However, it was already 8:00 PM, and we were still not close to leaving. This is the port stop for visiting Paris, about a three hour drive away, and apparently, some of the ship’s tours were running late returning to the ship.
Propellers Starting and Churning Up Mud
Finally, about 8:20 PM, the ship was moving away from the dock, and we were heading out of Le Havre. It was still daylight, and was sunnier than it had been most of the day. As the ship headed out, we saw a lone dolphin jumping out of the water next to the Harbor Pilot’s boat. There were also some sailboats outside the harbor. As we headed out to sea it had turned a little foggy, but the sail away was very scenic.
Leaving Le Havre
It got cold, well really colder, outside with the ship moving, so we headed down to the Wheelhouse Bar for a drink. We were not staying out long tonight, we were tired and have another long port day tomorrow, but we were able to catch up with Dagmar and Gerd, and also Sam and Glenda.
We visited for a while and then headed back to the cabin around 11:00 PM. We set the wake up call for 8:00 AM tomorrow morning, we don’t get to port in Zeebrugge tomorrow until 9:00 AM, so no need to be up early. We did not have a firm plan for tomorrow, there are two possible destinations we can visit. We will be making the final call on where we will actually go to, once we see the what weather is like in the morning.