Normandy, Brittany & the Best of the North_ With Paris (Fodor's) - Fodor's [33]
APPLE COUNTRY
One fragrance evokes Normandy—the pungent, earthy smell of apples awaiting the press in the autumn. Normandy is apple country, where apples with quaint varietal names, such as Windmill and Donkey Snout, are celebrated in the region’s gastronomy, along the Route du Cidre, or at Vimoutier’s Foire de la Pomme festival in October (where they vote for the Most Beautiful Apple!).
CHEESE PLATTER
Camembert is king in the dairy realm of Normandy. This tangy, opulently creamy cow’s-milk cheese with the star billing and worldwide reputation hails from the Auge region.
The best—Véritable Camembert de Normandie—with velvety white rinds and supple, sometimes oozy interiors, are produced on small farm properties, such as the esteemed Moulin de Carel.
Other members of Normandy’s (cheese) board are the savory, grassy Pont L’Évêque, the impressively pungent Livarot with rust-color rind, and the Pavé d’Auge, a robust cheese with a honey-hue center.
CALVADOS
There are no wines in Normandy, but the region makes its mark in the spirits world with the apple-based Calvados, a fragrant oak-aged brandy.
Like Cognac, Calvados, which is distilled from cider, gets better and more expensive with age.
Top producers, such as Dupont in Victot-Pontfol and Pierre Huet in Cambremer, sell Calvados from “Vieux,” aged a minimum of three years, to “X.O.” or “Napoléon,” aged from 6 to 25 years.
Many producers also offer Pommeau, an aperitif blending cider with a generous dose of Calvados.
ON THE HALF SHELL
Few places in France make an oyster lover happier than Normandy’s Cotentin Peninsula.
Here, where the land juts into the sea a few miles beyond the Landing Beaches, are ports such as Blanville-sur-Mer, Granville, and particularly St-Vaast-La Hougue, where oystermen haul in tons of plump, briny oysters distinguished by a subtle note of hazelnut.
Enjoy a dozen on the half shell at many traditional restaurants in this region, accompanied by a saucer of shallot vinegar and brown bread.
OMELET EXTRAORDINAIRE
There is no more famous omelet in the world than the puffy, pillowlike confection offered at La Mère Poulard in Mont-Saint-Michel (02–33–89–68–68).
Whipped with a balloon whisk in a large copper bowl, then cooked in a long-handled skillet over a wood fire, the omelet is delicately brown and crusted on the outside, as soft and airy as a soufflé within. Order the omelet with ham and cheese as a main course, or sugared and flambéed as a majestic dessert.
NORMANDY ON CANVAS
Long before Claude Monet created his Giverny lily pond by diverting the Epte River that marks the boundary with Ile-de-France, artists had been scudding into Normandy. For two watery reasons: the Seine and the sea. Just downstream from Vernon, where the Epte joins the Seine, Richard the Lion-Hearted’s ruined castle at Les Andelys, immortalized by Paul Signac and Félix Vallotton, heralds the soft-lighted, cliff-lined Seine Valley, impressionistically evoked by Albert Lebourg and Gustave Loiseau in the Arts Museum in Rouen—where Camille Corot once studied, and whose mighty cathedral Monet painted until he was pink, purple, and blue in the face.
The Seine joins the sea at Le Havre, where Monet grew up, a protégé of Eugène Boudin, often termed the precursor of Impressionism. Boudin would boat across the estuary from Honfleur, where he hobnobbed with Gustave Courbet, Charles Daubigny, and Alfred Sisley at the Ferme St-Siméon. Le Havre in the 1860s was base camp for Monet and his pals Frédéric Bazille