Deauville &
Honfleur.

Deauville has been the seaside address of Parisian society since the nineteenth century, and it still behaves like one. The boardwalk and its striped parasols, the Belle Époque villas, the racecourse and the casino make an afternoon that feels entirely removed from the city without ever feeling rustic.

Honfleur, twenty minutes further along the estuary, is its opposite in temperament. The old harbour is lined with tall, narrow slate-fronted houses that Boudin and Monet painted repeatedly, and the wooden church of Sainte-Catherine was built by shipwrights who framed the roof like an upturned hull.

The two together make a single well-balanced day: the morning on the coast, lunch at a seafood table on the quay, the afternoon among the galleries and the antique dealers. Your chauffeur moves the car between the two towns so you never retrace your steps.