Adventures

Fécamp :: Tuesday

I'm having a pretty quiet day today, because it's a little wet outside.

Thanks to Jen, i now have the bus schedules for the coastal bus routes. Despite these routes being in the same system as the routes i normally use down in Lillebonne, their schedules are not readily available. Now i can get to Etretat and Fécamp via bus whenever one is running (i almost wrote "whenever i want", but i know better than that). Just having these options makes me feel better. Thank you, Jen!

Fécamp :: Monday

I started off the day with a walk along the front and down on the beach. Fécamp has a pebble beach that runs right up to the cliffs. There are no tidal pools; there are no sand dunes. There are rocks. And it's beautiful. This is known as the Alabaster Coast, and the soft, chalky cliffs have layers of flint running through them at fairly regular intervals.

After a slow stroll by the beach and a lot of picture-taking, i headed into town. I visited the two main churches, St Etienne and St Trinité. I saw the ruins of the ducal palace built by Richard I, second duke of Normandy in the 10th century (this was where William the Conqueror had a big victory celebration in 1067). I ate lunch (sausage and fries, yum). I discovered that chocolatines are called pepites in Fécamp. I rested.

Then i went out for dinner. Warning: verb tense shift ahead. Do not be alarmed. Go with the flow:

The restaurant doesn't have a menu i can read, in my hand, here at my table? I have to read the different chalkboards dotted around the room? And i mean dotted. Salads and mussels (yes, mussels get their own section of the menu in coastal Normandy) are in front of me; desserts are behind me; appetizers and main courses are at the other end of the room; and aperitifs are around the corner. No wine or beer list is available. Now, i'm not complaining. This is merely an expression of surprise. I'm on holiday, and i will not be complaining. At least not as much as usual.

I order steak and fries (i know, i had fries for lunch, but i'm on holiday, okay?). When it arrives i notice the chef has written the name of the restaurant in sauce on the plate. Fancy!

Around me people are being served huge canisters of mussels. Conversation (which i am trying to listen to, after last night's experience) is almost completely drowned out by the snick of shells being opened, the squishy sound of mussels being torn from their little houses, and the clatter of empty shells being tossed into metal dishes.

I begin to wonder why the woman at the next table is having so much trouble lighting a cigarette until i look over and realize she doesn't have a cigarette in her hand. The noise i thought was the rasp of a cigarette lighter was in fact her sucking mussels out of her teeth. She makes up for it later by actually lighting and smoking a cigarette.

My meal was delicious, especially dessert (tarte tatin). I topped it all off with another walk along the front, and then i came back to the hotel and blogged all about it. Excellent day.

Find pictures here:

What’d you say?

Last night i had dinner with Jen, the lycée assistant in Fécamp, and her friend Dan, who is visiting from Montreal. While at the restaurant, Dan excused himself to go to the bathroom. When he came back, he related this small incident:

He opened a door that he hoped went to a bathroom (there were no signs on any of the doors he found). Behind this door were two other doors. He opened the one directly in front of him, and found himself in a one-person bathroom. Good! Exactly what he needed!

After finishing his business, he opened the bathroom door and was confronted with an indignant 10-year old girl, arms akimbo. She explained to him, as one explains to someone who might be a little slow, that normally, the other door over there is where men go to use the toilet. Apparently, Dan had inadvertently used the ladies' bathroom.

Thankfully, he has been properly reprimanded, and it will never happen again.

In other restaurant news...

At this same place, there was a table occupied by three middle-aged men. The men were all speaking English, but it was not a first language for any of them. Dan and Jen had to point them out to me as being speakers of English, because i hadn't even realized that i might be able to understand what they were saying.

This worries me. Have my eavesdropping powers completely deserted me after a few months in a foreign country? Have i become so accustomed to being unable to understand other people's private conversations that i have actually stopped listening to them? I like eavesdropping. It gives me pleasure. And to think i might not be able to do it anymore makes me a little sad.

Vacation

I have made it to Fécamp, and i am officially on vacation.

As soon as i stepped out of the train station, a strong, sea wind hit my face; Lillebonne doesn't get much wind. I passed two Chinese restaurants on my way to my hotel; Lillebonne doesn't have any Chinese restaurants.

I am in a new world.

Oh, and my hotel has a very nice wi-fi connection.

I'm going to take a nap.

Comments

I love the inanity of spam comments on my blog. Here's one that Aksimet (the spam catcher) caught today:

Hello!

what is your favorite color of….mine is pink!

Wow, I’ve found the same to be true too! How did you find that?

Bye, - MyGirl!

It, of course, included something about making money in some ridiculous fashion or another.

And speaking of comments, did you guys suddenly just wake up? Five new comments in the space of an hour and a half! I'm not complaining at all (since my life right now is almost exclusively taking place online - Lillebonne is everything it's cracked up to be).