A Stormy Night in Honfleur
Bar Review Honfleur
The following were visited one stormy night October 2026. I recommend them all.
Le Fontenoy - cafe with terrace on the street: 38 Rue de la République, 14600 Honfleur
Mamie Louise - excellent & quirky French burger restaurant: 52 Rue de la République, 14600 Honfleur
La Taberna - Spanish style bar / restaurant: 6 rue de la Ville, 14600 Honfleur
L’Albatros - Bar overlooking Le Vieux Port: 32 Quai Sainte-Catherine, 14600
The Approaching Storm
There was fin de siècle almost après moi la deluge quality about this night.
Storm Austen was closing in during the evening by announcing itself by first whispering and then roaring through the trees, by the sudden sporadic but violent downpours, by umbrellas turning inside out and then, as the night wore on, the mayhem inflicted upon the harbour cafe marquees that line the Vieux Port scattering canvas, chairs and then tourists.
I chose this evening to take my coat off later on and prance around in a tight black Boss T-shirt. The performance of the artist, solo travellor and single guy.
Whilst others chose a night in their hotel room dusting off books, trying French TV and - oh why not, we’re on holiday, perfunctory sex - I was out and about dodging the oncoming gale. An ideal night to bar hop in Honfleur, brush the rain from my notebook and write in the rain-splattered covered terraces of bars whilst slaying pints of Affligem, bottles of cidre, thimbles of calvados and other drinks forgotten but remembered on the morrow.
Aperitif and Entree
A pre-match warm up is provided in Le Fontenoy Bar. Sat outside in the covered plastic terrace on a busy street leading away from the port, a young man in a suit parks his car and escorts a suitably matched young lady to the table next to me. They order pints and watch in horror as some oaf tries to squeeze his 4*4 into a tiny space next to their car. Much to my disappointment, the 4*4 manages the tight squeeze without any bumps. Damn! I love street theatre. I pay the bill, brave the rain and head to Mamie Louise.
Mamie Louise is a French burger bar - elevating burgers to French levels of culinary craft. It’s an eclectic place like someone’s over-dressed front room; been coming here since pre covid. They jazz up the burgers and give them all French names. I have the Louise - patty, cheese, bacon, salad etc and drink a bottle of local cidre.
It’s a couples type place. Hemmed in next to me are a young couple on a date. He wears a tight white T and studies the menu with his left hand whilst placing his right hand on his knee flexing as hard as he can. His trophy date doesn’t seem overly impressed by the ridiculous peacocking. I notice they don’t talk much.
Neither do the older couple opposite. He’s let himself go - all loose jeans, slovenly hoodie and chain-store trainers. She’s smartly dressed in a tight pink sweater, hair well styled and dyed, still attractive. She faces me and whilst meeting my eye, does not linger. Maybe she’s distracted by flexi boy next to me. Dunno. She deserves better than her slobby husband anyway.
Fortified by a departing calvados with my cheesecake and cafe, I hit the night as the winds begin to howl.
Honfleur Bars on a Rainy Night
It’s out of season and many restaurants and bars have decided to shut up shop for the year. As Honfleur relies on tourists for its trade, this makes sense but limits my options. I find a cocktail bar - La Taberna - in a backstreet which has just three occupied tables inside:
Boring couple - tourists, possibly English - in matching Kagoles and sturdy trainers - nursing a small beer and a smaller wine and no conversation. They don’t stay long.
A loud table of five middle aged women and one older bloke sharing a ludicrously large platter of seafood and bottles of wine.
The attractive barmaid and her boyfriend lighting cigarettes in the smoking room terrace.
I go back there to vape and am joined by one of the seafood women. We have a confused conversation which goes on just long enough for me to start thinking, yeah, I would. When she rejoins her table I’m joined in the backroom by a middle aged guy in a beanie. He rolls a cigarette.
“Vous êtes français?” I ask.
“Nah, Scottish, pal.”
“Ah, I’m English.”
“I could have told you that.”
“Why?”
“Cause you’re fucking half-cut mate.”
We find this funny and return to his table as Spandau Ballet’s True blares out.
Sam and Jock own a camper van and go away 48 weekends a year. This weekend, they’re in Normandy. Tonight, the night of the storm, Honfleur. They drink cocktails. They’re obviously on a mission tonight now the van is parked up. We chat and they seem friendly enough but I decide to move on to see if I have other options elsewhere. Single man’s eyes.
A Nightcap at the Old Port
The storm is getting worse and cafes and bars are shutting their doors early. I walk along the Quai Sainte-Catherine by the Vieux Port and find Cafe l’Albatros. Seems to be Honfleur’s hip spot and is pretty busy. I secure a high table outside on the covered terrace overlooking the port. The wind blows and the rain falls but I’m dry here.
Next to me is a table of locals; three girls and two guys in their late teens / early twenties. The attractive blonde has several empty shot glasses in front of her. She’s animated, always offended, forever on the verge of leaving. She doesn’t. Chin fluff guy - her date? - stays calm nursing a small red wine which never seems to empty. He’s all reasonableness biding his time.
The blonde looks at me. She holds my gaze. I’m caught. She looks away first. I read somewhere that this is a power move. It feels like it. She gets into another argument and brushes past me into the bar.
As she does so she knocks into a glassy eyed older lady coming out who stops at my table. She asks me, in French: “Was there anyone here at my table?” Something random anyway. Still, the act of saying something to a stranger, I found, often trumps what is actually said. A confusing franglais conversation follows. Her questions are enigmatic. My answers are ponderous. I ask her to sit down but she has deep riddles in her eyes and goes back in.
She’s attractive, of a certain age and had clearly been giving le vin a bit of a pounding tonight. Inside she rejoins an older man. Are they on a date? Is he just an interested friend? I look through the bar window from my seat and our eyes meet maybe two / three times, each time holding our gaze just slightly longer than socially acceptable.
The bar is playing 80’s classics. We’ve now got Simply Red ‘Holding Back the Years’ which I never liked much but I do tonight.
The storm is picking up intensity and the bar staff rush outside to take down the pavement marquee which - to the amusement of everyone on the terrace - has been threatening to be blown away for the last half an hour. Sheltering there were five or six male French teenagers. Shouldn’t they be out looting and burning stuff? All dressed in black hoodies. Some sort of rebellious uniform? The uniformity of their dress is lost on them though and they sit down next to blonde girl and her mates. This gives blondie another opportunity to walk out. She gets so far as standing up and then sits down. Perhaps another round is coming. Her companion’s red wine remains undrunk.
Moonlight Shadow - Mike Oldfield
A Cocktail of Chaos
Things start to look good when the older drunken lady walks onto the terrace with her date. They perform an elaborate dance with her trying to get him to go home and him alternating between trying to stay, persuade her to come with him and straight out trying to kiss her. She evades all this and at last he reluctantly leaves. She looks at me. I look at her. Could this actually happen?
“Tim, you fuckin’ twat!” shouts the Scottish guy Jock from the earlier bar. He and his partner have followed me to the Albatros. For fuck’s sake! Wrong time. Wrong time. I was just about to… Bollocks.
“Do you mind if we join you?” Sam asks and she and Jock sit at my table. The French lady - let’s call her Estelle now she’s a lead character - sits at a nearby table. Clearly she’s local and begins chatting to some people. Fuck!
Jock and Sam tuck into some more cocktails. I look across at Estelle and my eyes signal her over. Not ideal - what with these two at my table - but you take what chances you can. However, she walks over.
Of the three Brits, I speak the best French - a low bar - but she’s on the opposite side to me and so her conversations tend to be either with Sam (best places to visit, best restaurants to go to) or with Jock who has found himself a Google translate App. He finds this funny and passes his phone back and forth with Estelle. I’m annoyed at this exclusion and ask Jock what’s so funny.
“I just typed in, will you go back with Tim tonight and she said no.”
“For fuck’s sake! I was getting to that.”
“Well, she said no mate. Probably out of your league anyway.”
Wanker.
I get my revenge when an obviously gay friend of Estelle’s comes over and starts hitting on me. I have, despite Storm Austen, taken off my coat and am just wearing a tight black t-shirt. So, I guess I’m a good first choice over Jock who’s a bit dumpy and lumpy and anorak’d up. Knowing he doesn’t speak French, I tell the guy that Jock likes a bit of cock on holiday - pédé en vacances and all that. The gay guy starts flirting with Jock who’s no idea what I said but is pissed merry and happy to chat with a friendly local.
Men At Work - Down Under.
Estelle and Sam swap WhatsApp numbers. Estelle doesn’t ask for mine but Sam wants my number so we can all meet up tomorrow. I give it to her and she calls immediately. I type Random Girl In a Bar Honfleur as her name to much hilarity before discreetly deleting it. She asks about my notebook. I tell her I’m an author working on a new story.
Jock asks if he can read my notebook. In response I tell Jock to take one for the team in the toilets with his new mate. There’s probably a free drink in it for all of us. Sam agrees and tells him to do it. Free cocktails after all. Jock though is not happy and though his new friend keeps chatting to him, Jock just stares ahead and blanks him.
The Winner? Austen, of course!
More drinks are bought and events begin to spiral. Beer, porn star martinis, Baileys, sambuca, whisky and coke. Estelle has arranged to meet Sam & Jock at an expensive restaurant tomorrow. Will I come? I say bollocks to that. I have plans. Plateau de Grâce or something. Sam & Jock have a drunken argument and Estelle walks off down the harbour into the night. I call after her but my voice is lost in the wind and she keeps walking.
The storm is now upon us. The boats sway this way and that violently tugging on their moorings. Cardboard boxes left outside the cafes for collection are swept up and dragged into the harbour or slam against walls. Menu boards shake. The trees bend in the wind, branches snap off and leaves fly around like so much autumnal confetti.
The bar is closing. It’s after 1am and I’m pissed and pissed off. This stormy night though in Honfleur is just beginning. The long summer of 2026 is over.
Storm Austen hits Honfleur Oct 2026. Rain and gales across the carpark!
Quotidian Notes & Further Reading
Like some form of migrating bird, I come back to Honfleur, Deauville, Trouville every year.
Read one my earlier articles: An Art Tour of Honfleur & Rouen. It’s my impression(ism).
Perhaps Paris is your thing? Read my guide to getting to the Bastille from Gare du Nord.
I was recently in Prague. My Prague Quintet dissects the city from nights out, comedy clubs, museums, The Castle.
Dessine-moi un mouton
Le vieux port - Honfleur. Picture TR. Notice the light?
Honfleur - It’s About the Light
I read once - sometime ago - that Impressionist artists loved the quality of the light in Honfleur, Normandy. The way it arrives sharply from the estuary, dapples on the water, shards through the slate tiled buildings. I think my photograph (above) of the old harbour might actually demonstrate this beautifully. You’re welcome (@Tim Robson - reasonable rates for reproduction rights if you’re a cheap arse and can’t be bothered going yourself).
Yes dear readers, we’re into one of Tim’s infrequent forays into art criticism. But, like some overfed, underbred Yorkshireman holding forth after several pints of frothy ale and a chicken madras, “I know what I like.”* The rest of this article may be a bit rough and ill-focused. Bit like Impressionism, in fact.
Tim’s Impressionism
Normandy plays an important role in the development of impression art. Impressionists, when they weren’t trying to get unemployed actresses to take their clothes off for ‘life studies’, liked to paint out of doors - en plein air - and so light, and the quality of it, was really important. When I was younger I used to claim I liked impressionist artists. It was fashionable. However, as my tastes have matured and become designedly my own, I’m less enamoured these days. I prefer a more literal approach to a painting which can then be interpreted.
My notes from Honfleur are a little more damning - as befitting being written in a bar: “Impressionism seems to be an artist forgetting how to paint and covering this with obfuscation and swirls.”
Yes, I’ve just had a short break in Normandy. Honfleur is where one of the godfathers of impressionism, Eugène Boudin, was born. There’s a pretty good museum in the town dedicated to his work and other Impressionists. Extolling the light thereabouts, Boudin dragged a coterie of young men in the latter part of the nineteenth century to this part of France. Men like Claude Monet. And together they painted - and repainted - seascapes, beaches, harbours and buildings, of Honfleur and other towns along the Côte Fleurie. Outside and capturing the light, you see.
So, wearing my black polo neck sweater, pea coat and artistic flat cap, I visited the Eugène Boudin musée in Honfleur and the somewhat grander Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rouen. Both have large Impressionist collections. Frankly, I’m all Pissarro’d and Sisley’d out. I had the freedom to be slow, to be quick, to linger over paintings I liked and to pass by those that didn’t interest me (basically anything with fruit or tedious biblical allegories). However, both galleries are worth a visit. Each contain copious non-Impressionistic paintings amongst their roster. French art galleries just do it right don’t they?
(Rouen town however is a bit of a clown show. Beggars and drunks acting out their dizzy versions of Les Misérables. Check out my searing Third Battle of Mons for some more of this urban theatre vibe.)
The Bell Tower Honfleur: Tim v Monet
One thing I noticed though about all these Impressionists: Everyone who held a painting stick seems to have had a go at rendering The Bell Tower in Honfleur. Hell, me too… So let’s start by comparing Monet and Tim Robson shall we? First up our old mec Claude:-
Clock tower Honfleur - Monet
Not bad Monet - bit squiggly for my tastes though. More bell-end than bell tower.
Now me… I literally did the drawing opposite in 30 seconds. I bet Monet took days to do his misjudged dab-fest. Piece of piss this art game.
But the gods of talent long ago asked me to choose between art and literary fame. I chose both and so got neither. However, some vestiges of skill still remain. More in the written word than the art world to be honest but - I’m available for commissions. I don’t charge much.
Same goes for my gigalo skills frankly.
Awkward Pivot: Which Paintings to See?
So, what pictures would I actually recommend from (the many) that I saw?
Le Martyre de Sainte Agnes - Joseph Court
The monumental Le Martyre de Sainte Agnes - Joseph Court 1864 (shown above in Rouen, picture TR). Clearly the Roman theme attracted me. Diocletian was one of the better emperors but became a bit of a bastard towards the Christians in his final years. Plug: Read my Roman articles, scholarly and yet still accessible.
Place de la Haut-Vielle Tour a Rouen - Giuseppe Canella 1824.
Rouen Cathedral. Grey - Claude Monet. This one grew on me. As I walked away from it, the indistinct shapes became whole and I - for once - ‘got’ impressionism.
Hetraie a La Côte de Grâce - Eugène Boudin (can’t find this online). One of his better ones. Can’t remember it though. This is a great article, isn’t it? Seek and ye shall find and comment on it below. Why was I right?
François Louise Français - Les Hêtres de La Côte de Grâce (can’t find this online either.) I’ve decided I like pictures of trees. In particular, I like pictures of trees in Autumn. I wrote a poem about this once. Crap but shows I’m sensitive. ‘Want another glass of wine, my dear while I talk about art and, er, what are you doing later?’
Light, shade, impressionism, abstraction and poetry. I’m the worthy shoemaker in the Renaissance looking up from his workbench and shouting “It’s all bollocks, isn’t it?”
But yet I go back every year. Honfleur may be touristy but, go out of season, and the old magic that drew these painters here still works. Works on me anyway. It’s a unique and mysterious place.
And I got through all this without mentioning Satie. He’s got a museum in town too. Never been.
Read On Mes Amis
If you want to pursue the French aspect of my corpus of writing then my Parisienne walkways series - Paris Profond - is the ideal place to start. Try the walk to Opéra or the more magestic walk to Bastille.
Or, sticking to the arty theme, my thoughts on Doisneau’s Le Baiser de l’hôtel de ville. Paris then. Paris now. The Paris of my youth. How art captures a moment.
And a song to finish (you off)
Finally, to round out the Gallic theme, watch one of my favourite French songs below as a well chosen companion piece to accompany this article - the monumental rock masterpiece that is Draw me a Sheep (Dessine-Moi Un Mouton).
Quotidian Notes
1) *Actually, digression alert, I was born in Yorkshire so I can laugh at myself (well, them really, but, whatever). Can’t do the accent though. When I try it sounds like some generic ‘trouble at t’mill’ version of a Northern accent soft southerners do to entertain themselves with at posh dinner parties when the subject of Brexit voters come up.
2) Revised, scabrous’d up in August 2026 along with numerous algorithm-pleasing internal links. Hey Google Bots! I’m a bloody authority on this stuff although I wear my knowledge but lightly. Reader, click on my thoughts on Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations. Stoic does not even come close to describing this head-to-head intellectual cage-match.
The Roman Theatre at Lillebonne
I was in France last week. In Normandy to be precise. I'll probably write later about the CItie de la Mer in Cherbourg or Omaha Beach or Etretat but today I want to quickly mention Lillebonne.
Lillebonne is a small town near the mouth of the Seine, about 30km from Le Havre. It has a pretty well preserved Roman theatre (one might also say amphitheatre). After Caesar subjugated the Gauls in the 50's BC, Juliobona - as Lillebonne then was - grew in importance in Roman northern Gaul.
As well as the usual forum and bath house, Juliobona sported a theatre that held an audience of around 5000. This was built by the Romans in the first century BC.
It was used for the next three centuries until the various waves of barbarian invaders gradually caused its ruin in the fifth century AD. The population by then were more concerned with fortifying the town against the marauding Goths, Huns and Franks than watching classic Greek plays or contempory satires (and yes, probably some cruelty).
So the town and the amusements declined and were left for ruins for 1500 years. And yet, here it is still! Rediscovered in the 19th century, partially standing, the theatre rises anew reminding us yet of the power of western civilisation. But also cautions us about it's decline. When I went last week it was beautiful day, hot, humid, a late spring day full of flowers and dappled sky. The grounds are immaculately kept, you can wander around at will and gaze at the Roman' architectural skill so many years later.
And - the cost is zero. If you are in the area pop in and take a look around. There's even a Norman castle hidden behind the oaks of the town's park. This - not the subterrainean theatre - was sketched by Turner on one of his forays into Europe:-
Turner's painting of the Norman Castle LIllebonne 1832 shows the hollow beneath where the Roman Theatre would later be excravated.
The castle still stands - a snag toothed ruin hidden from view but the star of the show now is its older cousin - the Roman Theatre.
“Every calamity is to be overcome by endurance.”
Je suis en vacances....
A view of Honfleur that is not the old harbour.
Crepes, cidre, galettes... Yes, I must be back in Normandy (with a brief trip to Brittany next door).
Went to the Caen Memorial musee today. Wanted my kids to understand what previous generations of British, Americans and Canadians did to liberate Europe. We forget so soon. I think a longer blogpost is called for on this subject and this excellent French museum (I always think the French do these things very well).
But, until then, another cidre and see you soon!
Tim