Carnival Pride Europe Cruise Review: Day 15 – Le Havrefeatured

We spent a lot of time planning for our day in Le Havre, going back and forth on all of the options in front of us.

The most obvious one was to go to Paris. Paris is one of my favorite cities anywhere and given the option to go to Paris or anywhere else, honestly, I’d almost always choose Paris.

But we’ve been to Paris a lot over the past seven years and we began thinking, though — what if we did something other than visit Paris on this trip? Le Havre is uniquely located near (ish — near is a relative term when it comes to European cruises!) so many wonderful places we’ve never been before. What if we didn’t go to Paris? What if we did something new?

As we poured through excursions, we were thinking maybe we’d go to Mont Saint Michel or tour the WWII sites in Normandy. We vacillated back and forth and couldn’t come to an agreement. Then, after we boarded the ship, more excursions were added, including a tour to Monet’s Gardens and Estate and the city of Rouen. It was the most expensive excursion the ship offered. We booked it immediately.

It went against everything I was trying to do on this cruise (sleep, rest) — it was over 11 hours and had a 6:45 AM meeting time — but it was an incredible opportunity to see something new and profound, and that’s always worth an early wake up (even if waking up early comes harder and harder these days).

We grabbed a quick breakfast up on the Lido deck before heading down to the Taj Mahal to pick up our stickers. The line wrapped all the way down to the casino but moved quickly and not long after, our tour number was announced and we made our way down the long gangway to meet our bus.

The terminal in Le Havre was small but offered a small shop and tourism facilities. There were options to book your own tours through the local taxi affiliation, or take a shuttle into town for, I think it was something like €10 or €20. The train station isn’t a far walk (maybe 20 or 30 minutes) if you wanted to go to Paris on your own, but given how far Le Havre is from most of these destinations, I’d recommend booking something with the ship for the assurance that in the event of a delay, the ship would not leave without you.

We found our bus and our guide and settled in for the two hour drive to Giverny and Monet’s estate. Our tour guide was a lovely young woman named Margot. She was incredibly knowledgeable about all things Le Havre, Monet and Rouen so we knew we were in good hands with her.

I fell asleep pretty early on in the ride and before we knew it, the two hour drive into the French countryside had passed in a blink and we were approaching Monet’s Estate, and Margot was sharing some history on Monet and his life.

Claude Monet, if you aren’t familiar with his work, was a French painter credited with creating impressionist-style painting. His most famous piece, perhaps, is his series on Water Lilies. Many of his works were inspired by the gardens around his home in Giverny and to have the opportunity to walk through them — I can’t even put it into words how excited we were.

Our bus came to a stop a short distance from the entrance. We walked through an underground tunnel to the group tours entrance and the anticipation was absolutely buzzing. These gardens have a worldly reputation for their beauty and we were all excited to see and experience them!

The gardens were incredible — every bit as beautiful and profound as their reputation — but the experience, itself, was a little disappointing. Our time in the outdoor gardens was guided and it felt rushed. Monet’s gardens are stunning (which seems obvious if you’ve ever seen his paintings of them) and Margot was moving quickly through them. This was the highlight and we could have wandered them for hours. It seems so basic to say, but it’s like seeing a painting come to life. The colors were just so vivid and the experience so overwhelming. It was hard to pay attention to the narrative Margot was sharing and experience it and capture it all at the same time.

We were turned over for free time inside Monet’s estate, where we could walk through all of the rooms, from the famous blue sitting room to the pantry, even his bedroom. Each room had these large windows looking out on the gardens and I couldn’t stop thinking about what a life that would be, just existing amongst such beauty and peacefulness. Certainly different from my daily life in the hustle and bustle of a large city!

The most exciting room, perhaps, was Monet’s studio, where you could view his works. In most places, these would be roped off or behind barriers, but here, you could see them up close and uninterrupted. Incredible.

The most popular room, interestingly enough, was his kitchen! So many people gathered and lingered in his kitchen. It was lovely, truly, but it was just a kitchen in an otherwise remarkable house surrounded by the unimaginable beauty of the gardens.

After the estate, we had about an hour or so of free time to browse the gift shop and see Giverny, the town Monet’s estate is in. Giverny is a small, quiet town filled with flowers just everywhere. We found a cafe, grabbed a quick lunch and walked around to see the shops and take pictures of all of the spring foliage.

Our group of 25 hopped back on the bus for the hour and a half ride to Rouen, the capital of the Normandy region. Stephanie and I have been wanting to visit Rouen since we saw a Rick Steves special on it before our very first trip to Paris. It’s an easy day trip, but we always find it hard to leave Paris, so it’s always been unchecked on our lists.

The bus dropped us off at the town entrance and Margot began an hour and a half walking tour of Rouen, where she walked us through so much of the history of this town and the sites. We went inside the stunning Notre-Dame de Rouen, a gothic-style cathedral that dates back to 260 AD. We walked past the Palais de Justice, the famous Gros Horloge, the Old Market and (most interesting to me), the Place du Vieux Marche — the location where Joan of Arc was burned at the cross.

The sites in Rouen were spectacular — just beautiful and rich with history — but I was fascinated by the stunning street landscapes that were just so quintessentially European. I couldn’t stop snapping pictures!

After our tour ended, we were given an hour of free time. It will surprise no one that I spent a half hour of that free time back at Monoprix dropping an embarrassing sum on French groceries and skincare. The rest of the time we spent popping into local boutiques, snapping more pictures and grabbing a quick bite at McDonalds (because International McDonalds are the best McDonalds and table service meals in France are notoriously long and slow).

We met back up with Margot and our group at the Place du Vieux Marche and I just continued to be taken by the history of the grounds we were walking through. We knew Rouen would be special, but I don’t think we realized how special until we could experience it for ourselves.

The ride back to the ship was another hour and a half. In all, our tour was over 11 hours long with long stretches on the bus. The French countryside is always lovely — I could stare out the window for hours — but it was a very long day and we were exhausted by the end of it.

It seems most tours returned to Le Havre around the time ours did. We bid adieu to Margot, who was really just wonderful, and made our way into the terminal building. I don’t know if it’s a ship thing or a Europe thing, but in every port, we had to go through security screenings twice: once in the terminal and again on the ship. The gangways were also very long — most days we were embarking and disembarking on decks 2 and 3, so we had long, steep gangways to walk back up to. Not the most fun after such a long and full day, but you know, helped us earn that Warm Chocolate Melting Cake for dessert!

We dropped our bags at the room and put our feet up for a few minutes while we checked in on the app for dinner. I think this is such an improvement from a few years ago, when you had to check in with a live host and wait in a public area. Now, you can check in through the app and it’ll notify you when your table is ready. Dinner service was speedy by a friendly and efficient team. I’d mention them by name, but Carnival has stopped putting the servers names on the tables and that’s one of the changes I don’t love. We used to love getting to know our servers — I can still name some of our favorites 15+ years later. But our servers tonight were great.

After dinner, we crashed. We caught sailaway and a lovely view of the city of Le Havre fading into the background, but we were pooped after such a long, full day.

We knew at some point we needed to pack, to get ready to say goodbye and move on to the last part of our adventure, but none of us seemed quite ready yet. Instead, we spent time on the balcony, we went to bed early and focused on the fun we’d have the next day in our final port of call in Zeebrugge.