Overnight showers had cleansed the air, the morning was brilliant with sunshine, and the deep blue sky was checkered with fair weather clouds. We were road tripping west through flat farmlands and pasturelands, which were lined with rows of beech trees to protect the land from the ferocious winds of winter storms. The landscape was dotted with Normande, a breed of dairy cow descended from the cattle that the Vikings brought with them when they settled in the area during the 9th century. A white cow, speckled with brown patches, this breed is favored for its milk’s high fat content, which lends itself perfectly for making CHEESE! More specifically the PDO (Protected Designation of Origin) Camemberts, Livarots, Pont-l’Evêques and Neufchâtels that the Normandy region is famous for. Small signs for fromage and cider pointed down many dirt lanes that spurred off our route.
We were heading to the white cliffs of Fecamp and Yport, in the Seine-Maritime department of Normandy, on the English Channel. While planning this trip we read about high season – over-tourism running rampant across France. Crowds don’t appeal to us, so we’ve been planning our travels to coincide with a destination’s shoulder season for a while now. The articles also suggested visiting places off the usual tourist radar, which is how we came across Fecamp and Yport, our stops before reaching Étretat. In hindsight we should have planned a full afternoon or overnight stay in Fecamp, as the quick glimpses of the Palais Ducal, now ruins, and the Holy Trinity Abbey, as we drove through the historic center, revealed a pretty town and looked intriguing, worthy of further exploration.
Our “walk a little then café,” becomes “drive a little then café,” when we have wheels, and by the time we entered Fecamp it was time to satisfy that late morning craving. Parking in unfamiliar towns is always a challenge, and on a busy Saturday even more so, but we lucked out and found both a parking space and great café near the harbor. The sunny outside tables at Le Coffee de Clo were empty so we were surprised when we entered to see a lively shop nearly full of people busily enjoying the decadent sweet creations we had stumbled across. More muffin than pastry, the baked goods and excellent coffee here are the only excuse you need to detour to Fecamp.
Walking back to the car, we spotted the Chapelle Notre-Dame du Salut, across the harbor, high atop Cap Fagnet. It’s believed that Robert the Magnificent, an 11th century Duke of Normandy, constructed the church in thanks to God for surviving a shipwreck in the waters below the white cliffs of Cap Fagnet. It’s been a pilgrimage site for fishermen, sailors, and their families ever since.
The views from the terrace in front of the church of Fecamp’s harbor, and the southern half of La Côte d’Albâtre, the Alabaster Coast, take in an 80-mile stretch of white cliffs between Etretat and Dieppe on the Normandy coast, that mirrors the distant White Cliffs of Dover across the channel. Locally the cliffs around Fecamp are known as le Pays des Hautes Falaises, high cliff country.
In 1066, William of Normandy set sail from Fecamps’ harbor with a fleet of more than 700 ships, partly financed by the Abbott of Fecamp, to claim the Crown of England, which he had inherited, but this was being contested by Harold, a pretender to the throne. The issue was settled at the Battle of Hastings when the former became King William the Conqueror. It was also reassuring to learn that the Fecamp monks transitioned away from being international arms merchants, and segued into a more appropriate occupation – running a distillery in the 16th century, that produced a 27-herb flavored liqueur that would become popular in the mid-1800s and sold as Le Grand Bénédictine.
Eight hundred seventy-eight years after William set sail, on June 6, 1944, during WWII German fortifications along the Côte d’Albâtre failed against an allied amphibious invasion fleet of over 7000 ships and landing craft. It was the beginning of the end of WWII. Scrambling to the top of an abandoned bunker provided us with the perfect vantage point for photos of the coast.
By the time we arrived in Yport the clouds had thickened and were threatening to rain. To our dismay, it poured just as we were parking by the beach promenade. Fortunately, it was an intense but brief shower that cleared into a cloudless sky and revealed a quaint picturesque hamlet and shining white cliffs towering above the sea.
The cliffs along the seafront have been eroding for eons, creating in certain spots deep, long ravines that funneled torrents of water, laden with sand and stone through the cliff face to the ocean, which created beaches in certain places over the ages. These narrow valleys are called valleuses, and the small coastal fishing village of Yport started in one during the Neolithic era.
Without a harbor, fishermen pushed their small boats across a pebbled beach and rowed out through the waves to pursue their livelihood. They repaired their boats and mended their nets on the beach at the foot of the town. This way of life supported the villagers for centuries. Only the invention of the small outboard motor in the early 1900s eased their physical effort, until the 1960s when tourism and a small casino replaced fishing as the town’s driving economic force.
In 1838, the tightly knit community decided to build a church. Men, women, and children gathered tons of smooth stones from the beach, carted them 500m inland, and proudly worked together to mix cement and build the center piece of their town. Horizontally striped with alternating layers of colored beach stones, the façade of the church is beautiful, and unique in Normandy. It is a true testament to the power of community spirit.
By the mid-1800s Parisians seeking a more relaxing retreat than Etretat were frequenting the quiet fishing village. The French painters Monet, Renoir, Schuffenecker, and Vernier visited and painted there, while the 19th century French writer Guy de Maupassant set his novel, ‘Une Vie,’ in Yport. Paths from the center of the town and from behind the casino lead to the cliff tops and join the popular GR21 trail that can be followed north to Fecamp or south to Etretat.
Regardless of how beautiful photos of the Falaise d’Aval are, they don’t rival the physical reality of the calling gulls, wind-swept hair, the whistling wind and the relentless sound of the surf crashing against the stoney beach.
Arriving late on a Saturday afternoon in mid-October, we were surprised Étretat was jammed with tourists. Parking is extremely limited here and finding a space is almost a competitive sport that ultimately just required us to sit in a row and wait for someone to return to their car. It sorted itself quickly enough and luckily, we were only a short walk from one of Étretat’s first lodgings, the Hotel Le Rayon Vert, which to our delight was directly across from the beach and Étretat’s promenade. After checking in, we headed to the top of the towering 300ft high cliffs for sunset, the first of many walks along this beautiful stretch of coast and the perfect way to work up an appetite.
If you have been following this blog, you’ll know my superpower is the ability to find a great pâtisserie, pastelería or pastry shop. It’s a great talent when the hotel wants 16€ per person for breakfast. In Etretat, the boulangerie patisserie “Le Petit Accent” exceeded all expectations!
Set high above the town, it was a steep uphill walk to the Jardins d’Etretat. This whimsical topiary garden, with playful faces as “Drops of Rain,” by the Spanish artist Samuel Salcedo, more so than the Falaise d’Aval, was the catalyst for visiting this seaside resort.
This magical spot has its roots over 100 hundred years ago when a villa and garden were built here by Madame Thébault, a Parisian actress, and friend of the impressionist painter, Claude Monet. Madame Thébault cultivated a circle of creative folks as friends, and Monet along with other painters and writers were her frequent guests. It was from a patio in this garden that Monet found repeated inspiration to capture the essence Les Falaises à Étretat. His love of the area is evident in the nearly 90 canvases he painted depicting various scenes along the Normandy coast. But the Jardins d’Etretat today are a relatively new botanical masterpiece reopening in 2017 after an expansive reinterpretation led by the landscape architect, Alexander Grivko.
Across from the entrance to the garden, a tall soaring monument pointing skyward, elegant in its simplicity, commands a view out over the cliffs and the ocean beyond. This tribute commemorates the last sighting from French soil of the pilots Charles Nungesser and François Coli on May 8th, 1927. They were flying their biplane L’Oiseau Blanc, The White Bird, from Paris to New York in an attempt to be the first non-stop flight across the Atlantic Ocean and win the Orteig Prize of $25,000. But they disappeared somewhere along their route. It’s believed they made it across the Atlantic, but crashed into the dense wilderness forest of Nova Scotia or Maine. Wreckage of L’Oiseau Blanc has never been found and their disappearance remains an unsolved aviation mystery, that rivals Amelia Earhart’s story. If Nungesser and Coli had succeeded, they would have beaten Charles Lindbergh in the Spirit of St. Louis by twelve days.
The Notre Dame de la Garde stands alone on the slope below the Monument “L’Oiseau Blanc,” isolated on the cliffs like a small boat surrounded by a vast ocean, its spire like a lighthouse’s guiding beacon, visible far out at sea. It offers a welcome sign for the fishermen and sailors returning home. Unfortunately, it was undergoing renovation when we visited in mid-October.
Walking back through the village we found the Normandy architecture in Etretat intriguing. It encompasses many different styles and runs the gamut from ancient half-timbered buildings embellished with ornate wood carvings, to 18th and19th century designs utilizing the local hard flintstone and incorporating steep pitched slate roofs and turrets into their designs. All fascinating.
Etretat has been a popular destination since rail service began between the port city of Le Havre and Paris in 1847. Swimming or a day at the beach later became common place with the latest fashion, the full body bathing suits. While society folks were sunbathing on the stoney beach, there was a cottage industry of locals, called pebblers. They collected the beach stones for their high silicone content, which were then pulverized and used for various industrial purposes. It’s now illegal to remove any pebbles from the beach as they are vital natural protection against storm surges and marine submersion of the promenade built across the top of the beach, which is much easier walk on than trekking across the pebbly beach, where each footstep sinks into the loose stones and is exhausting to cross.
The classic 19th seaside resort continues to draw visitors, with the success of the French Netflix series Lupin, based on the writer Maurice Leblanc’s character, Arsène Lupin, the gentleman burglar. Leblanc’s former summer home, where he wrote some of his books, is now the Le Clos Arsène Lupin Museum. Some scenes were filmed locally, motivating a whole new generation to discover the white cliffs. The other French writers and composers who enjoyed their time in the quaint village include Victor Hugo, Guy de Maupassant, and Jacques Offenbach, all of whom are remembered with streets named in their honor.
We also enjoyed our time along the Côte d’Albâtre, but just seemed to scratch the surface of this beautiful part of Normandy.
Till next time, Craig & Donna
Heading north on Routes 64 and 6 we drove past fallow farmlands waiting for their Spring tilling, and forgotten industrial sites as we worked our way north towards Stara Planina, the Balkans Mountain range that runs east to west for 348 miles and divides Bulgarian into northern and southern regions.
Turning down the long driveway of the 
On a wintry, cloudy afternoon the silhouette of 
At the opening ceremony in 1981, tribute was paid to those who had gathered there ninety years earlier. “Let the work of sacred and pure love that was started by those before us never fall into disrepair.” Buzludzha was a huge success and a point of national pride for eight years, hosting communist party congresses and educational events. Schools and businesses booked tours for their students and employees. Foreign delegations were paraded through to witness socialism’s success. But then in 1989 the Berlin Wall fell and communism collapsed like a fighter jet breaking through the sound barrier. The monument to socialism was suddenly ironic, irrelevant and abandoned. In 1999 the security guards protecting it were removed and the building was left open to the public and it was looted. Anything of value quickly disappeared, and the rest was left to vandals and frustrated citizens who were known to take their anger out on the building with sledgehammers or spray paint. The red stars in the tower were shattered by gun shots. Soon the glass skylights broke and water damage from rain and the winter elements hastened its structural decline, and the building was eventually shut tight to protect folks from injury. The day we visited there was a lone security guard, suffering as he made his rounds in the bitter wind, protecting this crumbling modern ruin from a handful of visitors.
As we continued our journey north through the mountains on Route E85, the picturesque 
Woodcarvers, weavers and other craftspeople dressed in period outfits helped further to transport us to a simpler era at the beginning of the Bulgarian industrial revolution. We visited on a quiet day, but the museum has an extensive twelve-month calendar of events with many festivals listed that would have been nice to observe. 
Traveling along an isolated background road we worked our way towards Sokolski Monastery, known for its cliffside chapel overlooking the northern slope of the Balkan Mountain range. We weren’t disappointed; the church is stunning with its colorful exterior frescoes contrasting with the natural environment surrounding it.
Built in 1833, the monastery has played an important role in Bulgarian history. During the April Uprising of 1876 eight freedom fighters took sanctuary there. Later captured by the Ottoman army, they were thrown to their deaths from the cliff behind the chapel. The short-lived April Rebellion was brutally repressed, but a year later Russia would help the Bulgarian rebels defeat the Turks at Shipka Pass and begin the march towards freedom. In the courtyard of the monastery an octagon-shaped water fountain was built with eight spouts to commemorate those fallen heroes. Legend states the fountain has never run dry and its cool water holds healing powers. 
We made it to Tryavna just in time to have dinner at the restaurant next to our hotel. Enjoying a hot meal after a long chilly day, we were entertained by the waitress trying to keep a determined stray cat from entering the restaurant every time the front door was opened.
Generations of skilled woodworkers have lived in the Tryavna River Valley, turning trees harvested from the deciduous forests on the slopes of the Balkan Mountains into furniture and ornate wood carvings.
Crossing the footbridge over the Tryavna River at the clock-tower, the pleasant whiff of wood smoke came to us on a chilly Spring morning. Large woodpiles are essential in this region and we saw plenty of homes with the winter’s firewood neatly stacked, as we wandered around the village, with its parks filled with sculpture and tulips in bloom.
Over the centuries Saint Archangel Michael Church has been reconstructed several times. Its most recent incarnation dates from 1853 when the tall wooden belfry was added. Inside, the interior is richly ornamented with elaborate 19th century woodcarvings and iconography created by members of the Vitan family, famous throughout Bulgaria for generations of skilled artisans. The carved bishop’s throne is an exquisite masterpiece.
The safest way to order your cup of java in parts of Bulgaria is to ask for a traditional coffee, not wanting to offend anyone by calling it Turkish. The fact is Greek, Albanian, Bosnian, Persian, Turkish andthe same, plus or minus cardamom or a local spice. But here in Tryavna at the Renaissance Café the coffee was brewed on a very traditional sand stove. A shallow pan filled with sand was heated over an open flame, and a long handled, brass cezve was filled with coffee and water, then partially buried in the hot sand to brew. With diligent attendance our coffee was brought to a frothy boil three times before being moved to the top of the sand where it stayed warm while the grounds settled. The ritual of the event definitely enhanced our enjoyment of the brew.
We only just scratched the surface of this lovely country. There’s so much to see here, especially in its vast countryside. Hopefully one day we’ll get a chance to return.
Just outside Old Town Plovdiv, 
At just over a mile long the pedestrian mall in the center of Plovdiv is the longest in Europe, running from the Stefan Stambolov Square along Knyaz Alexander I, and Rayko Daskalov Street before ending at the footbridge lined with shopping stalls that crosses the Maritza River.
But the jewel of the mall area was the curved ruins of the Ancient Stadium of Philipopolis, with its fourteen tier seating area, unearthed in 1923. Situated below street level and surrounded by modern buildings at Dzhumaya Square, the ruins provided a dramatic juxtaposition of the ancient and contemporary, where you can actually see the layering of history and how the city was built over earlier civilizations. From this excavated section, archeologists have determined that the stadium was a huge 790 feet long and 165 feet wide and could seat nearly 30,000 spectators.
Across the square the Dzhumaya Mosque is the main Friday Mosque for Muslims in Plovdiv. Constructed in 1421, it replaced an earlier mosque built in 1363 on the foundations of a Bulgarian Church destroyed during the Ottoman conquest. It is one of the oldest and largest Muslim religious buildings in the Balkans. At the café in front of it we enjoyed some sweet Turkish tea and pastries in the warm afternoon sun.
In the airport, at the tourist information kiosk, multiple large screen tv’s played flashy videos promoting Bulgaria’s culture, tourism, and natural beauty. We asked the woman staffing the desk for a map of Sofia and directions on how to transfer into the city. “Follow the line,” she snapped. Not fully understanding I asked again. “Follow the line!” she barked firmly a second time. She scowled in the direction of the arrows painted on the floor and turned away. Her previous career, I’m speculating, was a prison guard in the now closed gulags. She was obviously better suited commanding prisoners to “assume the position” than to being the first friendly face welcoming visitors to her country. I’m sure she was hiding handcuffs and would have used them if I asked another question. But that’s how it was, one day you’re communist and the next day you’re taking customer service courses and trying to embrace a free market economy. And for some the promise of a better life hasn’t been realized. Later, one of our hosts would express, “some folks prefer the old way, they’re still communists.” “Come and keep your comrade warm,” another refrain from the Beatles song, didn’t ring true. We weren’t feeling the love just yet. Aside from that rocky start, we had very enjoyable time in Bulgaria. 
The line led to a modern subway station adjacent to the airport terminal and for 1.60 BGN, about 90¢ USD, we rode the
We emerged onto the pedestrian only Vitosha Boulevard filled with folks enjoying a warm Spring day and an incredible vista of Vitosha Mountain towering over the city. Inviting outdoor cafes lined the street and we quickly chose which one we’d return to after meeting our Airbnb host. We stayed on Knyaz Boris just two blocks parallel to Vitosha Boulevard and as majestic as the pedestrian mall was, the side streets, though tree lined and harboring small shops and restaurants, were slightly dismaying with wanton graffiti tags on every apartment building door and utility box. There was a lack of pride in ownership. 
The idea that’s it’s not my responsibility is a leftover from the communist era, when the government owned and was responsible for everything. The front door to our building was no different, but our third-floor walkup apartment was an oasis with a sun-drenched living room and tiny balcony that we would call home for a month. And to our delight, but to our waistlines’ detriment, there was a baklava bakery across the street! 
Long at the crossroads of expanding empires, Bulgaria has had a contentious past with Thracian, Persian, Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Ottoman and communist influences. The First Bulgarian Empire, 681-1018, has been deemed the Golden Age of Bulgarian Culture, with the adoption of Christianity as the official religion in 865 and the creation of the Cyrillic alphabet. Independent for only short periods of time during the medieval age, the National Revival period between 1762-1878 brought Bulgaria to finally throw off the yoke of Ottoman domination that had lasted from 1396. Sadly, there were only six decades of self-government before the proud people of Bulgaria became a satellite regime of communist Russia at the end of WWII and fell behind the Iron Curtain.
Today Sofia is transforming itself into one of the most beautiful, cosmopolitan cites in Europe with its pedestrian malls, extensive park system and tram lines that weave throughout the city. But the past is always present and just around the corner in Sofia. Walking north along Vitosha past the end of the pedestrian mall there is a three block stretch that displays a vast stretch of that history on the way to the Central Market Hall, where we were headed to stock our pantry. We got sidetracked.
Seven millennia ago, put down the first foundations of what we now call Sofia. The construction of Sofia’s modern subway system in the 1990’s revealed multiple layers of antiquity and many of the amazing artifacts unearthed are displayed, in museum cases, on the subway platforms in the Serdika station and National Archeology Museum nearby.
Tragically in a 1925 bombing, the Bulgarian Communist Party attempted to kill the King of Bulgaria and other members of the government who were attending a funeral at this church – one hundred-fifty people died, and the cathedral’s dome was razed. Excavations behind the church in 2015 uncovered early ruins and a treasure of 3,000 Roman silver coins from the 2nd century AD. 
It ends just short of Banya Bashi, an Ottoman mosque built in the 16th century. The towering statue of St. Sofia is also visible just beyond the subway station. Ancient walls found during the renovation of the Central Market Hall can also be seen in the lower level of that building.
Nearby the oldest building in Sofia, the Church of Saint George, built by the Romans in the 4th century, has early Christian frescoes which were painted over by the Ottomans when it was used as a mosque, but they were rediscovered in the 1900s and restored. It stands surrounded by modern buildings in a courtyard behind the President of the Republic of Bulgaria building, within earshot of the Changing of the Guard.
In the crypt of the cathedral a small, state of the art museum showcases the development of Bulgarian orthodox iconography over the centuries. 
Nearby, the five gilded spires of the Russian Church, officially known as the Church of St Nicholas the Miracle-Maker, can be seen from the steps of Cathedral Saint Aleksandar Nevski. Built in 1914 on the site of a mosque that was torn down after the liberation of Bulgaria, it served has the official church for the Russian Embassy and the Russian community in Sofia. The religious murals that cover the interior of the church were created by Vasily Perminov’s team of talented icon painters, who were also responsible for the iconography in Cathedral Saint Aleksandar Nevski. Darkened by decades of candle smoke, the fresco paintings in the dome were restored in 2014.
In 2001 an early Christian mausoleum was unearthed near the American Embassy and it’s fantastic that things are still being discovered in 2019.
Fortifying the high ground was the rule centuries ago and the last remnant of Castelo e Muralhas Castelo Branco, the white castle, still commands the skyline above the old historic district of the town. Much isn’t known of the history of Castelo Branco before 1182, when it is first mentioned in a royal document decreeing land to who else, but those prolific castle builders the Knights Templar. Only 18km (11 miles) from the Spanish border, the fortified village quickly grew into an important center of commerce and line of defense to protect the Portuguese frontier. Today only two towers and a wide section of the ramparts are all that remained to remind us of this once mighty fortress and walled city. Igreja de Santa Maria do Castelo is thought to be the first church built in the village, when it was constructed within the castle walls on the foundations of a ruined Roman temple. The church had a turbulent history: destroyed in 1640 during the Portuguese Castile war, burnt down in 1704 and then used by the French as a stable when they invaded. It was left in ruins until it was rebuilt in the 19th century. It now sits peacefully in the park, atop the hill, with a view of the surrounding countryside.
2 Suitcases for 2 years 