The night air was still crisp and there was a heavy dew on the car windshield, which the wipers quickly cleared. The mirrors we cleared with our fingertips. We set off. We figured we would just follow the short line of cars ahead of us onto the small car ferry when it returned from the far shore. When the cars were waved aboard the ferrymen raised the ramp, brought in the mooring lines, and we departed.
No payment was requested from any of the cars. Five minutes later we landed in the small riverport village of Quillebeuf-sur Seine, which looked intriguing in the early morning light, and whispered for further investigation.
Honfleur was our first destination. The sun was trying its hardest to burn through a stubborn, light cloud cover by the time we reached Honfleur. Hoping the solar effect would help us, we found a table inside by a window, though we still needed to wear our coats. Accessed by a small channel off the La Morelle river before it empties into the Seine and the Bay of Le Harve a short distance away, Le Vieux-Bassin is a well sheltered anchorage that for centuries has provided French sailors a safe haven against ferocious North Atlantic storms.
From the s into the s the seaport flourished as the gateway for goods entering France from Canada, its North America colony, and later Asia. Wealthy merchants surrounded the Le Vieux-Bassin with story buildings that were warehouses on the lower levels and their homes above. From the harbor we wandered our way through the quiet town past galleries, restaurants, antique stores, and all variety of contemporary shops, which have replaced the sailmakers and ship chandlers which previously outfitted merchantmen and explorers before they set sail on long voyages to distant lands.
Samuel de Champlain most famously sailed from Honfleur on his first voyage to Canada in and founded Quebec. A block above the quay the 15thcentury Eglise Sainte-Catherine sits on the ruins of an early 11th century chapel destroyed in the Hundred Years War. The 11th century church was one of three in Fecamp, Honfleur, and Caen that Robert the Magnificent, an 11th century Duke of Normandy, constructed in thanks to God for surviving a shipwreck in the waters below the white cliffs of Normandy.
