Honfleur, Houses and Boats

The tide in the English Channel goes up and down and in and out a long way each day, so Honfleur’s harbor has a canal-lock to keep the larger boats afloat while the tide is out. Small boats, docked outside the harbor, are build with “legs” and “feet” so they will rest on the mud and remain upright during low tide. Honfleur’s Ste–Catherine Quay, with its seven-story houses, remains much as it was when Samuel de Champlain sailed from here to explore Canada, hundreds of years ago.

On each visit our photo opportunities are fresh. In the harbor there is always a differing arrangement of colorful boats, and the open-air market embellishes the street scene. A TV antenna on the roof of an old house certainly looks out of place, but then if we lived there we would want an up-to-date TV picture, even if we didn’t live in an up-to-date house.