Normandy

Once every few weeks, my husband deems the city too noisy, too crowded, too city-ish and we escape to his family's place in Normandy for a country break. Over the years, what was once just a holiday house to the family has slowly become a retirement dream for my husband. And it is easy to see why.

At 2 hours from Paris, little roads like this are aplenty in the Normandy region, where cars have to stop if another comes in the opposite direction. And one of these roads lead to our little piece of heaven. Nestled among several hectares of land, we are isolated from the city & yet Deauville is only 10 minutes away.

We stock up on groceries beforehand & breathe in the clean pure air of the country.

We say hello to the neighbour's horses and admire the hay rolls.

We pick raspberries & red currants from the garden, except that not many make it to the dining table as I am eating & picking at the same time.....

My husband has a field day (pun intended) cutting the grass, setting mole traps etc... Even though they have a gardener, nothing gives him more satisfaction than to ride the tractor up & down the fields & take care of the land himself. 

Every summer, they clear the pond of weeds & this time round, we had a lovely surprise. Besides the usual frogs, we saw many fishes! How they arrived there remains a mystery as the pond is totally enclosed. An educated guess (according to a local) is that a heron passing by swallowed too many fish and dropped one from his mouth into the pond. 

We make daily trips to nearby towns like Pont L'Evéque to buy food and I fell in love with the local drugstore and even the butcher! It's so inspiring to see butchers wearing ties to sell meat... the French really do take pride in their professions.

And of course, no trip to Normandy is complete without a Martine Lambert ice cream stop in Deauville... We were served by Madame Lambert herself and she had no airs.

On the drive back to Paris, we were both quiet, lost in our thoughts... Him no doubt wondering if the mole traps had been successful & when we would return again.