dieppe

bank meeting – took an hour to update our information, move our home account and get a bank card for me. the bank card is a credit card too, and has a microchip. it is my key to life in france. you need this sort of card to use any of the machines that take cards – to buy metro tickets, train tickets, anything online. it costs much more than i would normally pay for a credit card, but it’s just part of the expense of being in the french system.

afterwards, we took off for p’s birthday weekend. he had wanted to go to the coast and so, he made all the arrangements for a trip to dieppe. it was a typical january day, rainy and grey, with temperatures in the 30’s. we got to rouen around 2:00. the cathedral that monet painted at different times of the day is here. it is quite gothic and even has a lacy feeling with all the little details on the facade.

got to dieppe in late afternoon. the hotel was right on the beach. it’s quite nice, even though it is a chain. the price was quite reasonable too. it was cold but beautiful on the beach. it’s always great to be at the sea. we had a mediocre dinner in one of the touristy seafood places at the harbor. i had whelks and winkles for the first time. whelks are a shellfish about ½ the size of a fist. nice chewy meat inside. winkles are tiny little sea snails – about the size of a toe – not too much flavor in these; these were just the appetizer. for the main course i had moules frites – mussels and fries. unfortunately the mussels were pretty tasteless. this is a really easy meal to make, normally and really delicious, so i suspect there was a big vat of mussels in the kitchen that had been sitting for a while.

Print this post