Dateline: Caudebec, France. Not an important Norman town, just a little river town that impresses with its lack of pretense. We walked around it and liked what we saw. The weather continues very nice, and according to our guides, very unusual for this region.
In the afternoon we took a “shore excursion” to see the little resort town of Etretat. As nephew Steve said, it was interesting because it is a tourist town appealing to the French who come there for the scenery and the beach. An analog in the States would be Santa Cruz on the CA coast maybe 50 miles south of SF. It doesn’t much draw foreign tourists but people from northern CA go there to “do the beach.” There are amazing cliffs with arches at either end of Etretat’s pebble beach.
Later in the afternoon we visited the place where Benedictine liqueur is made. The guy who resurrected the recipe from old manuscripts built the most amazing fantasia to house his distillery. It is a combination of gothic and renaissance and maybe some rococo architecture you’ve ever seen. Inside he’s collected ivory carvings, locks and treasure chests from the 18th century, statuary, all kinds of stuff.
The tour guide wasn’t much but the building and its contents were very much indeed. Then we saw some stuff that once produced Benedictine, and B and B. I’d had B and B and didn’t like it, so I tried Benedictine and liked it fine, though not so much as Amaretto.
In the late afternoon and early evening we cruised up the Seine to Rouen. River cruising in Europe is great. Unlike ocean cruising, with river cruising there is always something to see on the bank or in the channel. The river traffic is fun to watch, sea-going ships go as far up-river as Rouen. In that sense, this part of the Seine is like the lower Sacramento or upper San Joaquin rivers where sea-going ships go as far inland as Stockton or Sacramento. Because a river is relatively narrow, whatever traffic exists is close at hand and easy to see.
