March 1976, Honfleur, France

By Larry Fenwick

Honfleur is one of those tiny, picturesque harbor towns that tourists love to discover and you would expect to see featured on the kind of porcelain coffee mugs that grandparents bring back from their trip to France.

My wife, who is French, had always wanted to visit Honfleur, and although it has been painted many times by artists, the likes of Gustave Courbet, Claude Monet, and Johan Jongkind - and is even said by some to be the home of the Impressionist movement - for me, all that meant nothing. I am an American.

Ours was an early-spring wedding in 1976, followed by a reception in a swank hotel within spitting distance of the Arc de Triomphe, perhaps one of the best-known monuments in Paris. When my parents flew in from San Francisco, I took them for a drive around the huge traffic circle that surrounds the triumphal arch, reveling in the fact that there are no lines on the road and 12 lanes of cars, all weaving in and out among each other at squealing-tire speeds. In my opinion, that was the best part of this world-renowned tourist attraction.

The hotel function room was glorious too, and everyone was seated along a long table in the shadow of a huge Greek white-marble statue with no arms and no legs (I could tell a joke here, but it would be politically incorrect).

The food was served by an octogenarian husband-wife team of snooty waiters, who pretended not to speak a word of English and took fiendish pleasure in serving red meat that was practically raw to those who wanted it well-done, and pastry cups filled with calf brains to those who asked for the shrimp cocktail.

But I digress. This is about our honeymoon and Honfleur.

Since I had drunk industrial quantities of champagne, along with red and white wine, not to mention whisky shots as aperitif before the meal, I was in no shape for the five-hour drive to the Atlantic coast until well into the next afternoon.

In those days, I drove a Volkswagen Variant (remember? a boxy sort of station wagon popular with the West Coast surfing crowd) that I had picked up in front of the American Express office across the street from the Paris Opera. The spot was notorious as a kind of revolving used-car lot for tourists who needed a ride but were broke and didn’t ask a lot of questions. The car also had export plates, which meant no need to get it registered as long as you didn’t own it for more than a year.

Now, our wedding was a very joyous and important moment in our families’ lives, and so my little brother, who had just turned 19, also flew in for the event. In fact, he was staying with us for the duration of his visit. When it came time to leave for our honeymoon in Honfleur, naturally, he had to come along. The more the merrier, right?

I’m not sure to this day whether my wife felt exactly the same affection as I did for my one and only sibling, but she grinned and went along with the idea anyway. And he could share the driving, because it was windy roads and slow traffic all the way to the coast.

Rolling into Honfleur, spying the slate-covered roofs and the wooden bell tower of the burg, we realized that it was nearly 7 in the evening. We were charmed by the quaint port, its brightly painted sailboats bobbing like corks at their peaceful moorings, illuminated by a magnificent sunset. However, we also noticed that this usually sleepy village was now bustling with people, French and foreign tourists alike enjoying the clear spring evening air, as well as the uncharacteristically warm weather.

Reservations? Of course not. We may have been young newlyweds, but we fancied ourselves seasoned travelers, used to finding lodgings on arrival wherever we went and proud of our ability to always get the best deals.

Yet I have to admit that this was our first visit to a village on the Normandy coast, and a famous coast at that. The whole town seemed to be booked solid. Our spirits sank lower as the prospect of spending our honeymoon night sleeping in the car drew nearer. And then, after knocking on a dozen doors, we found that magic place we knew all along must exist, a tiny auberge with wooden shutters and seating for only 12 in an elegant dining room, dominated by 100-year-old oak beams and crisp white linen tablecloths.

But there was a catch. Only one room left (probably the only room left in the whole town!), so we would have to sleep with my brother. I explained the delicate situation to the innkeeper, who assured me that there would be no problem. With a wink, he had a Chinese 3-panel screen taken up to our room “for privacy, Monsieur.”

Such was the charm of the place that we took our evening meal on the premises. The food was excellent, the service impeccable, though I have absolutely no recollection of what we ate, since I was bracing myself for the night by downing 3 bottles of sturdy red wine, while insisting that my brother follow suit. I might mention that Honfleur is in the region of Calvados (which has lent its name to the local apple liquor of which we also generously partook).

After dinner, it was time for a stroll about town, the better to digest in preparation for bed. As we walked along, my brother noticed that the mouth of the harbor was closed for the night by two mighty gates, all made of wood and iron, about 12 inches wide at the top. “Ha ha,” he chuckled like a corsair mad with wine, “I bet someone could almost walk along the tops of those.”

An insane idea to be sure, and my wife admitted to me years later (my brother and I had both gone back and forth across those slippery surfaces) that she thought her marriage would end right there in beautiful Honfleur.

Back at the inn, we discovered the sleeping arrangements, complete with Chinese screen, which immediately gave me the idea to send down to the kitchens for a bottle of champagne. Soon from our cache behind the screen we could hear my brother snoring, and so we finally made love quietly (well, at least at first).

What followed is all very foggy in my memory, but apparently my wife wished for a bottle of mineral water, and so I was off again to the kitchens. A nice old man gave me what I wanted, amid the giggles of several girls doing the dishes.

This all had a rather adverse affect on my stomach, though, and so I found myself vomiting discreetly in the toilets, which were down at the end of the hall. When I finally did make it back to our room, my wife was fast asleep, and so never did get her mineral water. At that point, I passed out.

I know there were other lovemaking sessions that punctuated the night, but I won’t bore you with what for me remains mostly a blur.

On awakening the next morning, my idiot brother was sitting with one leg hanging out the window playing his guitar. This may sound romantic, and I’m sure that was his intention, but the problem was he didn’t know any songs all the way through. So his playing was just a collection of random riffs, which would leave you wondering what tune that might have been.

After breakfast, we politely decided on a little quality time on our own, so my brother took off for some sightseeing at the Sainte-Catherine church, which by the way is also the largest church made out of wood in France. Incidentally, he took his guitar with him.

On returning to the inn for lunch, just before going back to Paris, we found him with a hangdog look clouding his face. Of all things, he had tried to play his guitar for money on the square in front of the church. He recounted how amazed he was that not a soul would pitch a penny into his guitar case and how, when one young music lover, who couldn’t have been older than 4, had tried to give him a coin, her mother had abruptly pulled her daughter away, and then threatened to call the police.

So he had been back at the inn for some time already, hiding out.

At lunch, we drank mineral water. Then it was back into the car. As the bell tower of Honfleur receded over the hill, and the lush green of the Normandy countryside filled the windshield, I heaved a sigh of relief. Hell of a honeymoon, don’t you think?

Larry Fenwick works in advertising and wants to be a part-time freelance writer. Although he has published “millions” of words for others, he most enjoys writing for himself. He was born and raised in California, and has lived in Paris since 1975. Click here to read how his wife remembers this same story.

Posted by Elizabeth Armstrong Moore on Tuesday, July 10th, 2007 | Email This Post

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