Discovering Normandy, France’s Most Overlooked Region

Chapter 1: Normandy: France’s Most Underrated Region

Hello. Today we are talking about life in Normandy, France, one of France’s most overlooked and underrated regions. It is definitely overshadowed by Paris, bigger cities, and certainly the south of France, where the weather is undeniably better. But it offers this wonderful, unique mix of coastline, history, and an everyday livability that really deserves some more attention.

So, I just recently spent a couple of weeks there. I got my very quintessential French fisherman’s French coastal stripy outerwear. You can’t be without it if you’re on the coast here in France, no matter what coast it is. And this is kind of the beauty of living in Europe for me.

We decided to do this trip completely on a whim with my family and I. So, that’s my husband and two young daughters.

Chapter 2: How We Booked Our Trip to Normandy

On a Thursday evening, we asked ourselves, should we book a place for our kids’ school holidays? They’ll be out of school for two weeks. We hadn’t really booked any camps or activities for them. So, what should we do?

By the next day, Friday night, we had booked a little house.

We had basically just gone through all of the booking sites, and we were looking basically just at the house. We didn’t know the region at all, so it didn’t really matter to us which little village we ended up in. We just knew we wanted a house, a yard, a barbecue, and close proximity to the sea. A nice little village atmosphere, etc.

So, we packed over the weekend and headed out Monday morning. We rented a little car and it took only a couple hours to get up north.

So, this is really, again, one of my favorite things about living in Europe, the fact that it all is so accessible and so quick and easy to get to from one place to another.

Chapter 3: Discovering Luc-sur-Mer, Normandy

So, where we ended up was a little village called Luc-sur-Mer, which is Luc on the water. Sur-Mer means on the water. It’s a tiny village on the Côte de Nacre, which is the Mother-of-Pearl Coast, right next to the Côte Fleurie, which is the Flower Coast in the Calvados district of Normandy, France.

This is definitely not a huge tourism spot. But there is a pretty steady influx of tourists here coming from the U.S., Canada, and Britain because this was a major landing site. Of course, we all know about the famous World War II landing beaches, and this is where they all are.

So, even though it seems a little out of the way, it has a very steady tourism market. It’s famous in a little bit more of a grim way than it probably should be.

Because of all of that Allied interest, there’s a relatively large number of Americans, Canadians, and Brits that come here, whether it’s as a tourist or as an expat. You’ll hear English spoken in the smallest little corners of this region.

You’ll find that a lot of the tourism materials are in English as well as French, which is not typical outside of Paris, really. And you’ll hear every kind of Anglo accent that you can imagine.

You’ll also notice flags all over. Flags for all the Allied countries dot the coast, along with memorials. There are lots of signs in English here, as well as in French, which again is very unusual in a non-Parisian part of the country.

So, it all speaks to this kind of shared and globally esteemed history. There’s a feeling of camaraderie amongst foreigners here that we felt even just in two weeks there.

Because it’s a beautiful countryside full of history, castles, churches, and farms as far as the eye can see, growing everything from wheat to apples or raising cattle and sheep, there’s a lot more going on here than just those little tourism sites and memorials that you can visit.

There’s an active, fully agricultural lifestyle going on here. It’s got a distinct culture and history, even its own old language, which most parts of Europe frankly do.

Chapter 4: The History of Normandy

Especially in France, they were all split up and later unified. Before that, they were their own little Gallic tribes that became districts or regions.

Normand, the language, dates back to the ninth century when the Vikings settled here. This is the basis for this population. The people living on this coast are pretty much descended from Vikings.

They settled here and brought Old Norse with them. It mixed with the other languages on the continent. They became the Normans, and their language eventually became Normand.

It was still used, surprisingly, until the early 1900s. Finally, it petered out in the 1950s and 1960s.

You’ll still see it in places. In a gift shop we saw baby books with “my first Norman words,” and there are after-school activities and cultural programs trying to keep the language alive.

So, it’s pretty interesting. There is this very strong medieval history here that dates back to that era.

Chapter 5: What Luc-sur-Mer is Like

As I said, when we made the booking, we were looking more at the house than the location. We didn’t know the area. It was basically like throwing a dart at a map.

That’s how we found ourselves in Luc-sur-Mer, which turned out to be by far the best village in the little region we were in.

It had a little main street promenade, a boardwalk, and a little town center with restaurants and shops that were always full of people despite it being a fairly small population.

The little town hall park was really the best surprise for a young family. It’s home to two little petting zoos full of goats and bunnies, lots of ducks, and wild peacocks.

A whole flock of wild peacocks roam the town. You’ll see peacock crossing signs everywhere as you walk around town, and you’ll hear them everywhere you go.

I now know how to recognize a peacock call at any hour of the day.

They just wander around. They fly from roof to roof. We got really used to them hanging out on the roof we could see from our backyard. We woke up one day to one of them strutting by our upstairs window.

So, it’s a very fun little claim to fame that this town has, along with its blue whale skeleton, which is the centerpiece of the local park and a major symbol for the town in general.

The blue whale is the symbol for this little village. The poor whale unfortunately got beached on a nearby shore in 1885. Its skeleton was moved around to a few different places until it finally returned to this village and came to its final resting place in the park.

It serves as this beautiful sculpture on the side of the park, as well as a great excuse for some cetology education. There’s a little museum attached and lots of fun facts about whales and activities for kids.

While it might not seem like much, the peacocks, this park, the little petting zoo, and the blue whale actually amount to much more going on in this town than in any of the other villages we visited.

The other villages really didn’t have that kind of central city feel. They didn’t seem to have a promenade or boardwalk that was actively used. There was no little Main Street in most of them where you could walk from one shop to another.

In many of these other villages, you pretty much have to drive from one shop to another.

So, it really made an impression on us how lucky we got to find this little village, which I highly recommend.

Its church, like every village church here, is small and basic. Oddly, it was one of the least elaborate churches I saw nearby.

That’s really saying something because every single town seemed to have an overly large, overly impressive church with a tall spire.

I did a little research, and apparently there was competition back in the day. This was a wealthy trading area, so each little village wanted to compete to see who could have the nicest church.

The populations of these towns were also much higher then. So, it’s almost like the church was built and then the population shrank around it.

Luc-sur-Mer is basic, but it has all the necessities, which you can’t say about every village here. It’s got its butcher, fishmonger, bakery, bank, post office, and tabac, where you can get tobacco products, refill your phone data, buy a newspaper, etc.

It even has a small grocery store within town, which is very rare. And it has a few restaurants, not just one restaurant that’s open one day a week, but several restaurants that were all great and open almost every day.

The hours were a little iffy, but still, almost every day.

For bigger shopping or more culture, though, you’d want to go a bit out of town. The closest full hub is called Caen.

Chapter 6: Caen, The Full Hub of the Area

I had to look up how to pronounce it because I’d never known. I think most Americans or English speakers pronounce it “Can” or “Cain,” but the French pronunciation is Caen.

This is about 20 minutes inland from where I was staying right on the beach.

It has a major weekly market, several of them actually, lots of shopping streets, and many more services and competition amongst businesses than any of the little villages have.

We had a fun day trip to Caen. I couldn’t resist buying some fun shirts at the market, and my daughter got a ring she fell in love with.

It’s a fun little day trip. The castle and fortress here are fantastic. It’s a great little city or big town, kind of right on the cusp of either.

It would be a great place to live. I could definitely see it being a nice step down from major city living while still being bigger than a village.

If you’re living in a village or the countryside, it’s a very nice hub for a dose of larger city life.

The history here is incredible too. The whole region, especially Caen, is completely tied to William the Conqueror, who I didn’t know much about before going there.

But after reading up on him, it turns out he was a pretty big deal.

The Caen castle and fortress that I mentioned were built by William the Conqueror. It’s basically now just a giant park and cultural center with a couple of museums and community spaces within it.

It’s a great central green lung of the city where you can hang out for free, walk around, and enjoy wonderful playgrounds. Then you’ve also got museums there if you want a little dose of culture.

Caen also has an abbey built by William the Conqueror, and it’s now his resting place.

If you’re a history buff or into medieval history of any kind, this is a major stopping point globally speaking.

Even closer to where I was staying, though, and all along this coast, are lots of little villages.

Chapter 7: The Villages in Normandy

Ouistreham is one. It’s a busy little fish market town with a real port-town atmosphere.

Courseulles-sur-Mer was just five minutes away. It has regular food markets, a lively harborfront, and some stables, which I took my daughter to.

Then there are even smaller nearby villages like Saint-Aubin-sur-Mer and Langrune-sur-Mer.

You’re hearing the pattern here. Everything is sur-Mer because everything is on the sea, practically hanging off the cliffs.

These are all places that have their own weekly markets, bakeries, and everyday essentials.

If you’re living in the region, you’ll really start to know which town has which market on which day. If you want fish on a Thursday, which village should you go to?

You really get tied into the market life once you’re living in this kind of region.

Chapter 8: Deauville, The Regional Hub

The big regional hub here is Deauville, along with its neighbor Trouville to a lesser extent. Together they form a kind of twin seaside hub in the region.

They’re pretty much treated as one cultural and leisure spot, mostly just called Deauville.

Trouville is a little further east, and Deauville is the more well-known one. Trouville might be a bit more accessible, but Deauville is the famous one.

They’re separated by just a little bridge.

Deauville is this polished, very high-end destination. They call it the capital of chic on the coast.

Built by rich Parisians in the 1800s, it’s got luxury casinos, international film festivals, classic car shows, elite horse racing at the Hippodrome, and designer shopping.

The shopping street here is probably the most picturesque shopping street you’ll ever see. Louis Vuitton and Hermès sit inside these little half-timbered cottage-style buildings. It is beyond cute and adorable in terms of expensive shopping.

It generally has a giant annual calendar of cultural events that attract people not only from France, but globally.

Chanel actually opened her first shop outside of Paris here. Brigitte Bardot was a frequent beachgoer here.

It has this very famous 1920s boardwalk with about two-thirds of a kilometer of seaside strolling and little Art Deco cabins all along it.

There’s even a famous photo of Josephine Baker walking her pet cheetah, Chiquita, along the boardwalk.

Queen Elizabeth was once allowed to drive her car down it, even though cars otherwise weren’t permitted there.

It’s also home to the American Film Festival, not a French film festival.

So, this town regularly sees the likes of Michael Douglas, Harrison Ford, Clint Eastwood, Meryl Streep, Johnny Depp, Morgan Freeman, and Tom Cruise.

Basically, this town is all about film, horses, and upscale tourism.

Not necessarily the first place you might think to live, which is why I think of it more as a hub than somewhere you would actually settle.

Chapter 9: Trouville: A Livable City in Normandy

Trouville, right across the river, Trouville-sur-Mer if you want to get technical about it, actually feels a little more livable.

It has a more bohemian, traditional atmosphere. It feels less Parisian and more locally authentic.

It’s known for its working fishing port, exceptional seafood market, classic Norman beach culture, and long history as an artists’ and writers’ retreat.

The atmosphere is much more relaxed here, more authentic and down-to-earth.

It has lively fish restaurants and seaside promenades that feel less star-studded.

Together, though, Deauville and Trouville are this regional powerhouse. Deauville has the high-end entertainment, festivals, and international prestige, while Trouville has the maritime culture, gastronomy, and everyday coastal life.

The pair together are uniquely rich in both luxury and authenticity for the region.

It offers a pretty amazing cosmopolitan culture for the north coast. You don’t have to seek it out only in Paris.

Deauville was only about an hour from Luc-sur-Mer, where I was based. It was a fantastic day trip for us and would be a quick little getaway from many of these beach villages.

You could spend a little weekend there and get a place on the beach.

They call Deauville beach the quintessential Normandy beach. Unless you’re talking about Omaha Beach, you’re talking about Deauville Beach.

It’s famous for the way they wrap their parasols and for the people who go there.

You could easily be sitting on the boardwalk and see someone famous walk by without even knowing it.

Luc-sur-Mer, where I was based, isn’t really a market town at all. You’ll see a few tables set up and food trucks pop in on weekends, especially in good weather.

One weekend while we were there, we passed a local fisherman who had just set up a little folding table to sell his catch of the day.

By lunchtime, he only had a couple of fish left, so he must have been selling all morning.

I stopped to talk to him. We didn’t end up buying fish because we didn’t have time to get it back to the refrigerator before another activity.

I asked him how to grill a whole fish because I’d never done it before.

He explained how he would descale it and remove all the innards so it would basically be ready for the barbecue. He even showed us how to cut it and explained that once cooked, you can pull out certain fins and large sections of bone.

He told us to wrap it in foil with garlic and shallots and throw it on the barbecue for a few minutes depending on the size.

It would have been a fantastic dinner, but we just didn’t have the time.

Across from him was a little Moroccan food truck.

You see these food trucks all over villages in France. They might serve sandwiches, pizza, salads, Moroccan food, Asian food, Vietnamese food, Thai food, whatever it is.

Usually it’s someone living there who realized they could make a good living selling authentic dishes from back home.

These are genuinely authentic meals. I’ve eaten at some of these food trucks in Paris and tried dishes I’d never even seen on Vietnamese restaurant menus before.

So, it’s a really fantastic way to explore international food.

On weekends, these villages really come to life.

Chapter 10: What the Weekends Look Like

There are people everywhere. It actually felt quite crowded moving through the little pedestrianized streets.

Almost all of the shops are closed for most of the week, though. A few might open for mornings or afternoons, but Saturday and Sunday are the only times when they’re all open all day long.

So, it really gives the village a completely different vibe.

It’s a really fun little place to shop for cute things.

But the social hub of it all, which was surprising to me, at least weather permitting, is the mini golf course.

France actually has many mini golf courses. But if you’re from America, you’re probably imagining something elaborate.

Here, mini golf is usually much simpler. No animatronic dinosaurs or giant moving obstacles.

This one was no different, but it had a cute little nautical-themed course with fun statues and elements to it.

My girls loved it. We went several times because this was basically the entertainment hub of the village.

We would go to the main park with the animals, another park with a climbing structure shaped like a blue whale, and then mini golfing.

That was pretty much life in this town, and I loved it.

We also walked the beach collecting shells, if it wasn’t too cold.

What shocked me, though, was that the mini golf course had a restaurant attached, and we noticed this throughout the region.

Many mini golf courses along the seaside villages had “Le Terrace Mini Golf” restaurants attached.

In my mind, a mini golf restaurant meant hot dogs and fries. But in almost every case, the mini golf restaurant was actually one of the best restaurants in town.

You could sit on the terrace and have an amazingly delicious upscale meal while the kids played mini golf.

One afternoon the restaurant wasn’t open, but the owner was kind enough to bring me a couple glasses of wine while I played mini golf with my daughters.

It was a very endearing and charming little social hub, especially for a family like ours.

Chapter 11: What Surprised Me About Luc-sur-Mer

As I’ve said, I can’t believe how lucky we got ending up in Luc-sur-Mer.

You’d never know from looking at a map how different it is from the other very similarly named villages.

They’re all sur-Mer. They’re all right on the sea. They all seem to have the same amenities and appear to be the same size.

But none of the others we visited, and there were about a dozen that we drove through or spent time in, had any kind of commercial or social center like this one unless they were much larger towns.

They all seemed much sleepier, even on weekends.

In most of them, you really had to drive from one thing to another.

Our village felt like the only one where you could actually walk between places.

Before booking, we looked at the map and thought, okay, there’s a bakery, butcher, and grocery store nearby.

But when we visited the other villages in person, sometimes there weren’t even sidewalks. Distances were much longer than they appeared on the map.

What looked like a ten-minute walk often felt like a 45-minute walk.

I’m used to Paris, which is a fairly compact city, so distances here just felt larger.

My point is that it’s hard to know any place just by looking at a map.

As much research as you do and as many reviews as you read, you never really know until you’re there.

Sometimes it’s just luck. We threw a dart at the map, liked the house, and booked it.

We could easily have ended up in another town or even in Deauville itself.

Who knows how different the experience would have been?

It’s an argument for not judging a place by a map. You really have to experience it yourself before making any decisions about it.

One of the main tourist activities in this region, besides the World War II sites, is visiting cideries and apple farms.

Chapter 12: The Cideries in Normandy

This is big apple country.

The cideries are farms where they grow apples and turn them into cider.

There are lots of apple products too, like apple cider vinegar, Calvados, apple jellies, apple butter, apple juice, and countless other apple-based products sold in their little farm shops.

If you’ve never heard of Calvados, I highly recommend trying it.

Go to a nice liquor store and see if you can find a bottle. It’s the namesake liquor of the region.

It’s basically a sophisticated brandy made from distilled cider. It’s quite potent and usually served after meals as a digestif.

You’ll have a little glass of it after dinner.

It’s delicious and a bit sweeter than most digestifs, but not in an overpowering way.

The farms are great for both adults and kids. Kids can run around, climb hay bales, pick wildflowers, and many farms even have playgrounds or swing sets.

Kids are very welcome and embraced.

Meanwhile, adults get to learn about the production process and taste the products at the end.

It’s a fantastic family activity.

If you’re living in the region, visiting cideries becomes one of those annual traditions. You might go for harvest season or distilling season.

You might even try growing your own apple trees. The trees grow easily here, and many expats get into small-scale hobby farming based on the local produce.

Whether it’s olive trees, grapevines, orange trees, or apples, people really embrace that lifestyle.

Chapter 13: The Horses in Normandy

This is also major horse country.

I mentioned how Deauville is famous for horses, but this is actually one of the most important horse breeding and equestrian regions in the world.

Thanks to a unique mix of climate, land, and long-standing cultural investment in horses, Normandy is ground zero for horses in France and arguably Europe.

If you’re looking for a thoroughbred, there’s a good chance someone in Dubai is buying one from Normandy.

I jokingly thought to myself that there seemed to be more horses than humans in this part of the country.

Within five minutes of almost anywhere, there seemed to be a stable open to the public.

Within ten minutes of our house, there were no fewer than four stables where my daughter could take riding lessons or go on rides.

Within an hour, there were too many to count.

I found it funny when I read in the tourist magazine: “Fun fact: there is a stud farm every four square kilometers in Calvados. That’s 42,500 horses.”

So yes, there are horses and stables everywhere.

If you’re into horses, this is definitely a good place to come.

If horses aren’t your thing, the countryside here is remarkably flat and perfect for biking, walking, and hiking.

Chapter 14: Things to Do in Normandy

I highly recommend grabbing a bike and setting off to explore the region however you like.

The area is very well prepared for biking. Drivers are extremely tolerant and patient with cyclists.

You see bikers everywhere, in big groups, small groups, and families with little children trailing behind like ducklings.

There’s even an app to help find bike trails and biking amenities throughout the region.

Biking culture is huge here, and the flat land combined with the cool climate makes it an ideal place for it.

Chapter 15: The Pace of Life in Normandy

The pace of life here is very slow, as it is in many parts of Europe outside the capital cities.

Even though I’m fairly accustomed to village life, this felt like a new standard of slow.

Eating in a restaurant will take well over an hour if you’re lucky. You should really budget for two hours.

You are not getting in and out in under an hour.

One day we had about an hour for lunch before an appointment, but once we realized we only had 45 minutes left, we just went home and bought sandwiches from the grocery store because there was no way we could sit down, order, eat, and pay in time.

One evening while driving home from a day trip, we encountered what looked like a traffic backup on our street.

We were shocked because we had barely seen two cars drive by consecutively the whole trip.

The “traffic jam” turned out to be caused by a mobility scooter.

The sidewalks were probably too narrow, so the woman was simply driving down the road with her groceries.

Nobody minded. I also saw people driving golf carts and ATVs on the roads there.

Eventually, she realized we were behind her and politely pulled over to let us pass.

Everything feels very genteel and polite, but that’s the pace of life.

At one café we visited, I saw an illustration that summed it up perfectly.

It basically translated to: “I’ll just give you a quick five minutes and I’ll be back in fifteen.”

In the U.S., a server might say they’ll be right back in a couple minutes, and they actually return quickly.

Here, they’re basically saying not to count on exact timing and just relax into the pace of life.

You really have to learn to accept the rhythm of the place you’re living.

Chapter 16: The Downsides of Normandy

When it comes to downsides, I would say the pace of life could qualify for some people.

But the climate is definitely the number one issue.

It’s not for everyone. In fact, it’s probably my least favorite weather ever.

It’s windy, rainy, and chilly.

It’s cold in winter and cool all summer long.

My husband, on the other hand, absolutely loved the weather.

We were there in April, which isn’t warm in many parts of the world, and Normandy was quite cold at times and warm at others, as April tends to be.

He loved the bracing winds and the rain in his face. I, meanwhile, thought I was in hell.

I wore so many layers the first night because I felt frozen.

Eventually we figured out how to turn on the heating in the house, which helped.

But the sea breeze there feels more like a sea gale.

If you’re caught in a little wind tunnel between buildings, it can feel like the wind is physically pushing you around.

So, if you enjoy brisk seaside weather, this is the place for you.

The tourist shops really lean into this climate with funny umbrella-themed souvenirs and jokes about grilling outdoors in the rain.

There’s definitely an Irish or British spirit to the place — the idea that you can’t let the weather stop you from living life.

The flip side is that the climate keeps pests away.

Locals like to brag that there are no natural dangers in Normandy. No sharks, mosquitoes, snakes, or alligators.

Chapter 17: The Pros of Normandy for Retirees

Overall, Normandy brings together a slower pace of life with easy access to culture, coastline, and history, along with strong connections to Paris and the rest of Europe.

From places like Deauville and smaller towns like Luc-sur-Mer, you get beaches, markets, a strong café and food culture, and an outdoorsy rural lifestyle.

You also benefit from direct rail and air links that make travel easy.

For an American expat or retiree, the appeal here is balance.

There’s much lower stress in daily life because you’re not living in a major city and the pace is naturally slower.

You still have access to excellent healthcare. France has some of the best healthcare in the world.

These towns are walkable, and the countryside is flat, making it easy to walk or bike from town to town.

The social rhythm here is built around local life, the markets, the tides, and community rather than constant motion and business schedules.

That’s really the beauty of this kind of lifestyle.