Here is how to get to, where to go, what to see, where to eat and sleep in Les Sables-d’Olonne in the Pays de Loire on the West coast of France.

The Submarine museum (in French “Musee Sous-Marin“) is NOT a museum of submarines (for that you can visit the Flore submarine next door, click here to read more about it), but for a look at the life of the divers underwater. The most interesting part of this museum (a private and volunteer endeavour) is the […]

Lorient in Brittany is a rather large city of some 60,000 inhabitants which has as main attraction an enormous harbour area that hosted during WWII, the German submarines. The city dates back to the year 1666 and was constructed by a French trading company (the French East Indies Company) to be the base for their […]

One of the few things that are worth a visit in Cherbourg, or even doing a detour to visit, is the Cite de le Mer museum. The museum is quite recent, it opened its doors in the year 2002. But the building is not new. It is the former transatlantic terminal building from the glory […]

Although the Lower part of Normandy saw the biggest brunt of the WWII battles, with D-Day and the immediate battles that followed, the Upper part of Normandy saw its fair share of fighting. And during WWI, it was one of the battlefronts. Therefore throughout Normandy, at almost any hamlet, village, town and city, you will […]

The Le Havre Villa Maritime has a colourful past. Built in 1890 for a wealthy woman, the Villa was sold and taken over several times.   The Villa is located alongside the Le Havre Beach, accessible by the beach road and above. During World War II, the Germans took over the Villa and used it […]

Transport Getting There Getting to Fecamp requires your own transportation. There is a railway station, but the majority of arrivals/departures is done via bus which can take a long time. There is an occasional train, but it only goes as far as Bréauté-Beuzeville, and from there you need to change to the Paris-Le Havre rail line. […]

Fecamp is a small coastal city with an active fishing fleet. The fishing fleet is central to the city, since the fishing boats have been going to Newfoundland for over a century to fish for cod, and another large portion of the fleet fished for herring.   The city used to have several herring smoking factories, […]