Cherbourg, or as it is known officially Cherbourg-Octeville (after having merged with its neighbouring town), can be described as “quaint”. That’s the word I would use if I were to be positive. The real words that come to my mind are “drab”, “rundown” and “uninspiring”. NOTE: Click on the top photo for a bigger panorama […]

Transport Getting There By Air If you plan to come by air, you’ll need to fly to the Deauville airport that has some flights from the UK. Deauville is a 30 minute drive to Lisieux by car. Within Lisieux Lisieux is a reasonable bus system in case you want to discover outside of the city centre: […]

Lisieux, in the lower part of Normandy, is an interesting and different kind of place to visit. It’s a very small city (or a very big town) with a population of some 22,000 inhabitants, but despite its relatively small size it contains an enormous basilica AND a big cathedral. Because of that, and the large population of […]

The Basilica of Saint Therese in Lisieux is one of those buildings that is definitely worth a detour, even one of hundreds of kilometres. It is France’s second most visited pilgrimage site (after Lourdes), with 2 million visitors per year. It could be qualified in one word: imposing! The Basilica is located quite close to one […]

The one thing that Amiens is famous for, worldwide even, is its enormous cathedral. It is called the “Basilique Cathédrale Notre-Dame d’Amiens” (Basilica of Our Lady of Amiens Cathedral), or for short, the Notre-Dame (but not to be confused with the Paris one).   The Amiens cathedral is world’s biggest gothic-style cathedral, and also world’s 19th […]

Lyon has many churches, some of them very old, some beautiful and some ruins. But none are as beautiful or detailed as the Basilica of Notre-Dame de Fourviere. This magnificent church is built on top of the Fourviere hill (one of two big hills of Lyon) in the Old Lyon (“Vieux Lyon”) district and from there […]

Lyon is a city full of contrasts, particularly in its architecture. The city is big, Lyon itself is France’s 3rd largest city, but when you add the suburbs, then the Lyon metropole is France’s 2nd largest metropole (after Paris). It is also the world capital of gastronomy, the city where many of todays top chefs have […]