In the summer of 2009, after I finished another year of law school, we traveled to France. I flew to Paris two days before Julia to get my “art museum” fix and managed to visit four museums in that time. But once in Paris, I immediately discovered that food prices were exorbitant. As a student, I was accustomed to getting by on rice and beans and had to save up a chunk of my summer legal job salary to go to Europe. Now, in the heart of Paris, I was staring at a $4 Coca-Cola can and a $12 sandwich (in 2009 prices) and couldn't believe my eyes. For breakfast, I just had a cup of coffee. Lunch? A cup of coffee again, this time with a tiny croissant. I was doing just fine, enjoying my time in art museums. Standing in front of the Dora Maar portrait in the Picasso Museum that afternoon, I was immersed in studying her dark Hungarian hair, brightly painted fingernails, red lipstick … when suddenly … the colors started to blend. I was feeling dizzy. I was collapsing. Somehow, I managed not to pass out and landed on a nearby museum bench. After finally admitting to myself that I barely ate that day, I slowly got up and unsteadily headed to the museum’s cafe, where, to my shock and anger, the prices were even more astronomical.
When Julia arrived two days later, I didn't greet her with “Hello!" but instead blurted out, “Food is so expensive here!” During that trip in 2009, we tried our best not to spend all our money on food. Every evening, we shopped in a Moroccan grocery store by our hotel on the outskirts of Paris and ate that food for dinner and breakfast the following morning. Our lunches were actually great as we had improvised picnics in Parisian parks with an assortment of deli salads, cheeses, and fruit bought in local chain supermarkets. We treated ourselves to a giant crepe once and split it into two portions for a lunch-on-the-go. We ate in a restaurant only once and didn’t really like it, as we couldn’t justify the quality with the steep prices.
Visiting France ten years later was a different experience. On a four-day trip to Normandy last year, we came full circle and redeemed ourselves by splurging at expensive restaurants every day. We weren't hungry students or junior-level professionals anymore and had more money to spend. What a difference ten years makes.
The trip was an impromptu weekend getaway taken over Memorial Day. We flew to Paris, rented a car, and drove off to the Normandy coast. If you think this post is about us spending money lavishly and without limits, it is not. Our car rental was a simple Peugeot, and we stayed in cheap motels all four nights. Despite spending money freely on meals, we still adhered to our budget-conscious travel style.
Our first stop in Normandy was Honfleur—the seaside town with a postcard-pretty harbor. Because it's a port city, seafood was plentiful with numerous restaurants advertising “fruits de mer” (“fruits of the sea”). After extensive window shopping, we finally selected one where we wanted to indulge ourselves. The owner greeted us outside and told us that the restaurant would open for dinner later that evening. This worked quite well as we had time to explore the town a bit and work up an appetite.
For me, the main attraction in Honfleur was Eugène Boudin’s museum dedicated to the local artist and an early Impressionist, who taught Claude Monet to paint. That afternoon, the museum was empty—we were the only visitors—allowing for the undisturbed exploration of plein air paintings by Boudin and contemporaries. Making my way from one painting to another, I was lost in the moment and even forgot where Julia was. Suddenly, someone gently tapped me on the shoulder and said in very French-accented English:
“Monsieur, pardon, your friend...” I turned around and saw a museum attendant pointing toward the hallway where plush sofas were located.
Thirty seconds later, I found Julia loudly snoring on a museum couch. Jet lag and somber colors of Boudin’s paintings lulled her to sleep. Once she opened her eyes, she hastily jumped to her feet and, while trying to look casual, informed me that she lay down to think with her eyes closed about Boudin’s works.
After the museum, we returned to the previously scouted restaurant and had our first feast of the trip. The fruits de mer was a giant plate overflowing with langoustines, lobsters, clams, oysters, crabs, and shrimp. We also added foie gras and calvados, an apple-based alcoholic drink. The dinner was expensive (over $150), and our 2009 selves would have been amazed.
The next morning, we left Honfleur and headed to Bayeux. On the way out of town, we stopped at the bluff overlooking the neighboring port city of Le Havre, where the Seine enters the English Channel. Driving past green pastures and meadows, we also stopped to feed beautiful Norman brown cows, who were initially very apprehensive and suspicious of our intentions.
In Bayeux, the main attraction was an 11th-century tapestry. The 70-meter medieval rug housed in the Bayeux Tapestry Museum documents the Battle of Hastings, a turning moment in European history when the Normans defeated the Anglo-Saxons and established Norman rule over England. I liked the exhibit so much that I went through it three times. Julia found a bench near the exit and waited for me there while I examined every stitch of history. Wisely enough, she also made sure that when I found her, she was fully awake.
The best part of our second day in Normandy was another lavish dinner at a small and cozy restaurant, just steps from the cathedral. Despite petting cows just a few hours earlier, Julia went for a steak. We also ordered French onion soup and as many cheeses as we could eat, washing them down with pommeau, another apple-based alcoholic drink. The bill again was well over $150, but we didn't care as we were getting a quintessentially French experience and making up for all the meals we'd skipped during that hungry visit in 2009.
Altogether, for both of us, the four-day trip came out to almost $4,000, mostly due to pricy holiday airfare and non-stop food splurging, a personal record for the most money spent per day abroad. Just for comparison, we spent $6,000 on a 16-day trip to India just a few years earlier.
The next two days in Normandy and Bretagne proved to be even more memorable, including exploring an island abbey of Mont Saint-Michel, a medieval town of Dinan, and touring D-Day beaches and sights. Stay tuned!
