Paris to Normandy on the Seine

In our never-ending quest to better serve our clients, Esther and I took a river cruise from Paris to Normandy on Avalon Waterways in October of 2017.  Many of our regular clients have sailed with us on AmaWaterways or have been booked on Ama by the Boss, always with excellent results.   At our last annual conference for franchise owners, Avalon presented a workshop and looked appealing, particularly at a fairly significant price discount to AmaWaterways.   So we decided to check Avalon out for ourselves.

We selected their Paris to Normandy itinerary on the Seine River, because we hadn’t done it before and we have enjoyed previous trips to France.  The bread, cheese and wine alone are reasons enough for us to head off to the City of Lights.  Our flight arrived early on a Monday, and we took a cab to our hotel in the Montmarte district, not far from the Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Paris, or Sacre Coeur.  Since our room wasn’t ready, we walked around Montmarte for a couple of hours.  This is quite a workout, as the Basilica is at the highest point in Paris with sweeping panoramic views of the city.

Just one of the sets of stairs we climbed to get to the top of Montmarte - the Fitbit got a workout.

Sacre Coeur - the Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Paris.  Just around the corner is the artist district, where they paint in the square.

What goes up, must go down.  With my bad knees, going down steps is sometimes worse than going up.  But it doesn't hurt as much in Paris.

After a short afternoon nap, we found a café and drank some wine while we discussed where to have dinner.  We were still tired and decided to stop in a shop for some wine, cheese, ham and a baguette, and enjoyed a picnic in our room.  Paris may be an expensive city, but we found some nice wine for a mere 5 Euros.  The Boss is contemplating moving the business there.  The news of the Las Vegas massacre did put a damper on the evening for us.

In the morning, we took a cab to the Pullman Hotel near the Eiffel Tower to check in for the cruise and to drop off our luggage.  A craving for crepes took us down the road along the river towards the Eiffel Tower, and we found what we were looking for at an outdoor food kiosk.  Delicious!

The Boss and I enjoyed a ham and cheese crepe on the edge of the river with an amazing backdrop.

One of the many tour boats along the Seine.

This is my attempt at a more artsy shot of the Eiffel Tower.

We also took (I counted later) 29 different photos of the Tower, which you can’t help but continue to gaze at.  I've only included a few. It really is an amazing structure, and we had a gorgeous blue sky as a backdrop for the photos.  We managed to squeeze in some souvenir shopping before heading back to the hotel to be transferred to the Avalon Creativity.

This just looks French, n'est-ce pas?

The Avalon Creativity is pretty similar in appearance to most other river cruise ships, in terms of length and width, and layout.  The Sky Deck (Deck 4) is an open area with tables, chairs and loungers, as well as a small hot tub, and the location of the navigation bridge.  Deck 3 is the Royal Deck, with the reception area, the main lounge in the front half of the ship, a smaller lounge at the back of the ship, and higher category staterooms.  The Sapphire Deck (Deck 2) has the dining room and galley, and the next level of staterooms.  Deck 1 – the Indigo Deck – is all staterooms (and a tiny fitness center). Staterooms on Deck 1 only have small windows high on the wall, not the floor-to-ceiling sliding glass doors on the upper two decks.

We had a deluxe stateroom with French balcony (Category P) on Deck 3, with an area of 172 square feet.  This is definitely smaller than what we have had even on a lower deck on AmaWaterways, and if felt small.  There was not even room for a chair, except the one shoved under the desk area.  The bathroom was typical, and there was actually plenty of storage for clothing and toiletries.

The room was small, but functional with plenty of storage.  The door on the right goes to the bathroom, also small but functional.

Another view.

The first evening included the safety briefing, welcome reception and introduction of the department heads, followed by a port talk by our Cruise Director, Roos, from the Netherlands.  Dinner was at 7:00 PM, and the dress code was “smart casual.”  Apparently shorts were considered smart casual by a number of our fellow passengers.

The food during this cruise was OK, not great.  Service was not bad at dinner, but not so great at breakfast when you really had to try to flag someone down to get a second cup of coffee.  The cook just couldn’t make eggs over easy, and I tried three times.  Like most other river cruises, dinner is a sit down meal with a menu, and breakfast and lunch are buffet-style.  The crew was friendly and hard-working, but it felt like there weren’t enough of them.  So I did my research when I got home and found that the passenger-to-crew ratio on the Creativity was 3.6:1.  By comparison, on our last AmaWaterways river cruise, the ratio was 3.17:1.  With only 22 more passengers, Ama had 12 more crew members. 

On the second night, we signed up for the Bistro dinner in the lounge, which was complementary. This is Avalon’s version of a tasting dinner, paired with different wines, and limited to 20 people.  Although the wines were actually better than what was served in the dining room, the dinner was disappointing. 

Dinner was followed every evening by the on-board entertainment in the lounge, George the musician.  We suspect George has reached the pinnacle of his career.  On one evening, the entertainment was provided by a French singer and his keyboard player, Fabrice and Bruno.  This was the most crowded night in the lounge, and Fabrice got the passengers involved by having them sing along, and one passenger ended up grabbing the microphone for some karaoke. 

Like most river cruises, on-board activities are pretty limited.  Avalon had a pastry demonstration by a chef who also made crepes for lunch, a lecture on France and World War II, a wheelhouse visit, and tea time at 4:00 PM every afternoon.  The Boss and I ate crepes for lunch, but missed the other activities.

We departed Paris in the evening, and arrived in Vernon the next morning.  The morning excursion consisted of a short bus ride to Giverny, home of Claude Monet’s house and gardens.  We toured the gardens with the lily pond and Japanese bridge, which were the subjects of some of Monet’s most famous impressionist paintings.  We also walked through the village and saw Monet’s grave.

Giverny is a pretty little town.

The famous lily pond in Monet's gardens.

Another view, with the Japanese bridge.

A pathway with an arbor through the gardens to the house.  An amazing variety of flowers.

Monet lived in this house from 1883 until his death in 1926.

Monet and many of his family are buried in the cemetery outside this village church, which dates back to the Middle Ages.

Claude's tombstone, not in such great shape.

A poster in the window in this tiny village in France...we loved the "Make Giverny Great again"

Back in Vernon, we walked in the village and visited the parish church.

One of the medieval era half-timbered houses we saw all through Normandy.

After returning to the ship for lunch, we sailed for Les Andelys, a charming riverfront town, and the location of the ruins of Chateau Gaillard, a castle built by Richard the Lionheart.  We had a great guide named Pia who told the story of the lengthy siege and capture of the castle by the king of France, Phillip II, in 1204.

To get to the castle ruins, we had to hike up a fairly steep road and hill.

The Boss and I in front of the ruins of Chateau Gaillard.

From the castle we had some spectacular views of the Seine River and the village of Les Andelys below us.

The Avalon Creativity docked in town.

I always like to get a photo or two of a local resident in these small towns. I liked the expressions on her face and her dog's face.  Her dog reminded me of my dog Chipper. 

The cafe in the center of town.

The Collegiate Church of Notre Dame in Les Andelys, built in the 13th century

The church had a very impressive organ.  (That's what she said!)

The scenery along the riverfront next to the ship.  Weather brought to you by Dream Vacations!

Before we got back on the ship, we walked around the village and bought a bottle of wine in a small shop to take back on board.  It was a beautiful day and we had a glass of wine on the top deck.

We arrived in Caudebec-en-Caux the next morning.  Two excursions were offered in the morning: the Thatched Cottage Route, or the Normandy Abbeys Route.  The Boss and I selected the thatched cottages, and regretted it afterwards.  The tour was a bus ride to the small village of Vieux-Port that had many cottages with thatched roofs, and we passed other cottages with thatched roofs along the way.  Granted, these cottages are quaint and have a certain charm, but for us it was hard to maintain much interest in them after we saw the first dozen or two.

Here is one of the cottages with a thatched roof.

Here is another one.

This one had a nice lawn and a well with a thatched roof.

Here is another one.  OK, let's get back on the bus.

Upon returning from thatched house country, our guide gave us a brief walking tour through the medieval section of Pont-Audemer, and we saw more half-timbered medieval houses and some narrow alleys and canals through town. 

A narrow alley through town with half-timbered houses.

Many narrow canals run through the village.

Before we left for this trip, our grandson had asked us to start collecting police cars from all the places we travel to, and so we searched the village for a toy store, to no avail.  The only one we saw in a souvenir shop had NYPD on the side!  Not very French.

We skipped the optional (which means it costs extra) excursion to Honfleur after lunch, choosing instead to walk around the small town of Caudebec-en-Caux for a while.  No police cars to be found so we got back on board and enjoyed the rest of the afternoon on the sun deck.  This did cause us to miss the lecture in the lounge below about France and the Second World War.

The town of Caudebec-en-Caux from the ship, with the church tower in the middle and the town hall to the left.

We thought the sun deck was a great place to sit and have a glass of wine, but for some reason it was usually empty.

The civil engineer in me also enjoyed the beautiful cable-stayed bridge, the Pont de Brotonne, built in 1977 across the Seine, and according to Wikipedia, was the first of its kind in the world.

Sunset on the Seine.

The ship stayed docked in Caudebec-en-Caux overnight, and we boarded coaches the next morning for the Normandy beaches.  Passengers were split up between the excursions to the USA landing beaches and the UK/Canadian landing beaches for these full-day tours.  Our trip to the Normandy beaches took over an hour and a half by bus, but it was definitely worth it.  This was my favorite excursion of the entire cruise.  It was fascinating and moving, and you couldn’t help but feel mixed emotions of sadness and pride – so many lives lost, but so much courage and honor on display. 

The first stop was at Pointe-du-Hoc, which was where a group of U.S. Army Rangers scaled 100-foot cliffs to disable German artillery during the assault of Omaha and Utah beaches.  The site has a memorial and remnants of the German bunkers, as well as bomb craters all around.

This is the cliff the Rangers scaled on the morning of the invasion.

German bunkers provided heavy fortification of the site.



This is the view toward the cliff from inside a bunker.

This monument stands for the Rangers killed in the assault and two more days of heavy fighting.

Grass now grows in the bomb craters that are found throughout the entire area.

At the visitor center, American flags were at half mast, as this was a few days after the shootings in Las Vegas occurred.

From Pointe-du-Hoc, we were taken to a nearby country club for the included lunch, which unfortunately turned out to be a dry piece of chicken.  After lunch, we visited the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial.  The guides passed out a rose to each passenger, and told us it was traditional to lay the rose at the headstone of one of the fallen soldiers. 

In the past 2 and a half years, the Boss and I have visited three other overseas American Cemeteries; the one in Manila, one in Luxembourg, and one in Draguignan, France.  They are all meticulously maintained and very beautiful.  This was no exception.

The Normandy American Cemetery is located on a bluff overlooking Omaha Beach. The beauty of the cemetery is tempered by the realization that 9,387 American soldiers are buried here.

We strolled through the grounds and read names from every state, including numerous instances of brothers buried side by side.  Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., son of the president of the same name is also buried here.  He won a Medal of Honor for heroism at Normandy.

We decided to lay our rose at the cross of one of the unknown soldiers.

The colonnade at one end of the cemetery includes this sculpture, named The Spirit of American Youth Rising From the Waves.  

The colonnade also includes these murals depicting where and how the battles were fought.  We saw them at the other American Cemeteries, and they are always interesting.

The rest of our time at the cemetery was spent in the Visitor Center, where movies are shown, and stories of individual soldiers can be found.  My only regret was that we couldn’t spend more time in the Visitor Center, but we had to move on. 

The flags of the Allied nations are on display at the 30,000-square-foot Visitor Center.

An infinity pool looks out over the landing beaches from the Visitor Center.

Back on the bus, we drove along the landing beaches, today looking just like any other beach, although not very crowded due to the cool and windy weather.  It was easy to look up at the bluffs above the beaches and visualize how difficult it must have been to establish a beachhead with artillery and bullets raining down all around.  Monuments have been built in many locations in the area, and we were taken to see a few before we headed back to the ship.



Omaha Beach D-Day Monument.  It says "The Allied forces landing on this shore which they called Omaha Beach liberate Europe June 6th 1944."

This is Les Braves, made up of stainless steel columns and wings, in the middle of Omaha Beach.  You can see that the bottom of the elements are submerged at higher tides.

These statues of soldiers are part of the National Guard Monument at Omaha Beach.  

The ship departed from Caudebec-en-Caux at 6:45 PM for Rouen.  The next morning we had a walking tour of Rouen, which was the largest city we visited, other than Paris.  Sights included (yes, you guessed it) medieval half-timbered houses, the Notre Dame cathedral (there are a lot of churches named Notre Dame in France!), the Gros-Horloge (Great-Clock), and the site where Joan of Arc was burned at the stake.

A street full of the requisite medieval half-timbered houses.

 

The Church of Saint-Maclou, considered one of the best examples of the Flamboyant style of Gothic architecture in France.  

The Rouen Cathedral of Notre Dame - certainly Gothic, but apparently not as Flamboyant.

This qualified as ABC (Another Beautiful Church), and just the size and height of the structure are pretty awesome.

There are also some gorgeous stained glass windows in the cathedral, and....

Richard the Lionheart is buried here.   Well, OK, just his heart is in this tomb.  I'm not making this up - his bowels were buried within the church of the Chateau of Challus-Chabrol in the Limousin (Wikipedia again.). One can only ask -
"Why?"

The Gros-Horlage is an astronomical clock that was completed in 1389.

It is almost illegal to go to France and not  have les macarons.

This little fenced-in garden is where they burned Joan of Arc at the stake on May 30, 1431.

This is the Church of Saint Joan of Arc, erected next to the site of her death.

With no afternoon excursion scheduled, Esther and I decided to walk around and keep looking for the elusive police car.  We also had a nice lunch of pizza and wine near the Church of Saint Joan of Arc.  Full of optimism (and pizza and wine), we resumed our search for a French police car in this thriving metropolis.  No luck.

Our wanderings through Rouen resulted in us missing the compelling entertainment of an hour of strings and violins after Tea Time on the ship.  Worn out after many steps recorded on the FitBit, we also skipped the Wheelhouse Visit, where we could have learned more about the “nautical side of your journey.”   

The next morning, we arrived in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine (can’t you just picture Alex Trebek pronouncing all of these French names on Jeopardy?)  Conflans is a northwest suburb of Paris.  Our morning excursion was a trip to Chateau Malmaison, the former residence of Empress Josephine, and for a time, Napoleon Bonaparte.  When they divorced, she got the chateau along with a pension of 5 million francs a year (she obviously had the better lawyer), and lived there till her death in 1814.  Napoleon came back to live in Malmaison after his defeat at Waterloo, and before his exile to the island of Saint Helena.

Chateau Malmaison, purchased by Josephine in 1799.  Napoleon was furious with her for spending so much while he was away fighting in the Middle East.  Apparently it was a fixer-upper, and she also spent a fortune on renovations.

Our guide said this bust of Napoleon in the chateau was somewhat idealized, because he really did not look like a cross between Paul Newman and Marlon Brando.

He may have looked more like this, but the painters also needed to make him look good.  The guide said he wasn't really as short as historians make him out to be, but then she gave his height as 1.67 meters.  That equals just under 5 feet, 5 inches.

Josephine's bedchambers.  Interesting facts - through her son Eugene, she was the great-grandmother of later Swedish and Danish kings, and the reigning houses of Belgium, Norway and Luxembourg also descend from her.

We returned to the ship for lunch, which we ate in the lounge where the “light lunch” was served.  We did this most days, as this was quicker and less crowded, and service was actually better. 

Our afternoon excursion was a trip to Versailles, and after we boarded the coaches, the ship sailed for Courbevoie, where we would re-board after the excursion.  The Palace of Versailles is certainly a sight not to be missed, despite the extra cost to add this tour. Versailles is a wealthy suburb of Paris, about 12 miles southwest of the capital.

The Palace is really magnificent - perhaps because we were there recently, it reminded me of the Hermitage in St. Petersburg.  

This is just a small portion of the Palace exterior.  The Palace actually began as a hunting lodge built by Louis the 13th in 1624, then was expanded several times into the early 1700s.  Versailles then became the royal palace for the next three Louis(s), the 14th, 15th and 16th, until the French Revolution.

Some views of the palace interior, including the famous Hall of Mirrors.

As splendid as the Palace itself is, the gardens surrounding it are world-renowned, and deservedly so.

The Boss and I got a lot of steps walking around the gardens

We noticed a lot of security all around the Palace.

The coach took us to Courbevoie to board the ship which had come up from Conflans.  Since it was the second to last night of the cruise, we had the “Farewell Gala Dinner,” which seemed like every other dinner except we got a tiny lobster.  I wore my jacket and tie, but I counted only about a half dozen other jackets or ties out of 140 passengers, so nobody really took the gala thing to heart.  An optional evening excursion consisting of a “Paris Evening Drive” was offered, but we passed since we had been to Paris several times before.

On the final day of the cruise, the ship stayed at anchor in Paris all day.  We opted for the walking tour of the two islands in the center of Paris, the Ile St. Louis and the Ile de la Cite, where Notre Dame Cathedral is located.
   

A view of Notre Dame from the Ile St. Louis.

No matter how many times you have been to Notre Dame, it is still pretty awe-inspiring.  

On the front facade of Notre Dame above the center doors, the guide pointed out the sculpture of the angel and a devil weighing the good vs. bad in people to determine their afterlife destination.  Notice the little demon below the scale cheating by pulling down on the bad side.  Those 13th century craftsmen had a sense of humor. 

I just took this picture because the guy looked so.....French.

This is the Conciergerie, formerly a prison and part of the former royal palace.  During the French Revolution, hundreds of prisoners, including Marie Antoinette, were taken from here to the guillotine. 

After lunch, we resumed our hunt for a French police car and finally hit paydirt at a large toy store very near the ship.  

Success!  The long-sought police car was found in this really excellent toy store in Paris, La Grande Recre.

We went back to the ship to pack, then decided to skip dinner on board and found a small café nearby so Esther could get one last pizza in France.   Avalon arranged for a taxi to pick us up the next morning to take us to the airport, and we flew back to Dulles Airport that afternoon.

Three of the Boss's favorite things - pizza, wine and of course, me!  And all three are much better in France!

After another great trip, we continue to pinch ourselves and try to appreciate how lucky we are to be living our dream!!  Avalon is comparable to other river cruise lines at a very reasonable price.  One nice feature offered more often by Avalon is that singles can book without a single supplement charge (capacity controlled). 

We have decided that we will return to Amawaterways for a similar itinerary in September of 2019.  The Normandy landing beaches were definitely a highlight, and something every American should see. We invite you to join us!

Comments, criticism, questions or communication of any kind are greatly encouraged and always appreciated.