On la place Sainte-Catherine
We were up early on our last morning in Honfleur, another cool and drizzly day. We had to finish packing, but we also planned to visit the Saturday morning market and shop for provisions for a special meal we would fix for Dave and Aralynn in Burgundy tonight. These wonderful people—the owners of our Honfleur Cottage and Slow Travel friends we just met in person last Saturday—had invited us to spend a few days at their house near La Charité-sur-Loire on our way down to Provence.
I love the outdoor markets in France, and the Honfleur market was especially good, the food stands set up around the square at the beautiful wooden Église Sainte-Cathérine, its belfrey tower standing separately from the main part of the church. Charley had noticed yesterday that metal poles had been pulled up from the pavement in preparation for the market. Today the poles were topped with awnings, needed with today’s drizzle. We wore sweaters and carried umbrellas—just in case. We didn’t end up needing them.
In addition to a bountiful supply of fresh fruits and vegetables, the Honfleur market had an emphasis on the specialty products of Normandy: butter, cheese, apples, fish and shellfish, roasted chickens. We wandered among the stands, finally buying a terrine de foies de volaille (chicken liver pate, still warm and removed from its own clay baking dish); salad greens, tomatoes and a cucumber; a couple of baguettes; some butter cookies; and an apple tart. The feature of our dinner for the McManes would be “Linguine Honfleur,” a lemon pasta dish that Kelly discovered in a magazine in the cottage and cooked for us (by herself) earlier this week. The dish has nothing whatsoever to do with Honfleur—except for its discovery and inaugural preparation while we are here.
Fresh mussels from Barfleur
For more photos of the Honfleur market, click here.
We were glad we had planned our Saturday morning to spend an hour at the market, and it’s truly a unique setting. We wandered back by the specialty food and liquor shops and the many artist galleries that occupy many of the storefronts. It had been a good week in a unique cottage. We enjoyed discovering another beautiful part of France.
Later as we were driving out of town, Kelly saw many more market stands down by the Tourist Office and the Vieux Bassin. These stands seemed to be selling clothes, household goods, hardware items—the “traveling stores” that are a big part of most French markets. These stands interested Kelly much more than the food stands I enjoyed so much.
“Can’t we stop?!” she asked insistently. She hoped to find a gauzy lime-green skirt like the one she had spotted at the smaller market earlier in the week.
But we were headed south to Burgundy for a few days, and then to Provence, and needed to be on our way. I reminded Kelly there will be many markets in Provence, many opportunities to find that skirt she thinks she wants for her 13th birthday in two weeks… that is, unless she finds something she likes even better.
