Taxi Honfleur → Rouen

The Honfleur-Rouen journey is a trip through the heart of Impressionist Normandy, linking France's most famous painters' port to the city whose cathedral inspired Monet's most iconic series. Honfleur, with its Vieux Bassin of shifting reflections and half-timbered houses, was the cradle of plein-air painting: at the Ferme Saint-Simeon on the heights above the town, Boudin, Monet, Jongkind and Courbet laid the foundations of what would become Impressionism. Rouen extends this artistic thread with Notre-Dame Cathedral, which Monet painted in over thirty variations of light between 1892 and 1894. But Rouen is far more than a painting subject: it is an exceptionally preserved medieval metropolis with the Gros-Horloge (14th-century astronomical clock spanning the main street), the Place du Vieux-Marche where Joan of Arc was burned on 30 May 1431, the Aitre Saint-Maclou (medieval ossuary turned art school), and hundreds of 15th-16th century half-timbered houses. The route crosses the Seine estuary via the Pont de Normandie, then the Caux plateau with its flax fields and distinctive square-courtyard Caux farmsteads.