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Trouville Cote de Nacre,Trouville in Normandy Site Home - What's New?-Feedback - About Jack-Travel/Art Links |
NORMANDY
Trouville
Pays d'Auge, Calvados, Camembert and Cider
Cote Fleurie
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Trouville sea chateaux |
Two of the best renowned resort of the cote Fleurie are undeniably TROUVILLE AND DEAUVILE, each one with a different flavour easily to detect after a few hours visit. The two cities are only separated by the river Touques but TROUVILLE managed to keep its own identity, radiating a Belle Epoque ambience. In Trouville real life enters in, where everyone runs to, to eat and to drink and to be
themselves, to have a bowl of moules frites at "Les Vapeurs or "Le Central". Ancient oyster fishing village attracted artists in the 1830's and the fashionable soon followed, as did the habit of bathing and railway from Paris. Thanks to its fine sand beach it booms at the end of last century, a long time before Deauville. First sea baths, the joys and dramas of the casino, apparition of chalets and villas…nothing less than Flaubert (he will meet one of his greatest loves) and Alexandre Dumas come her to have a rest and inspiration, followed by Impressionists and Guy de Maupassant. As I said, the turn of the century was the high point of popularity for Trouville. It had a grand casino and a boardwalk when its neighbour Deauville was little more than a gleam in a
developer's eye. Then the Trouville authorities made the fatal mistake of putting up the rent of their casino, making the casino owners decide to move next door to Deauville. Deauville's expansion began and didn't stop while for many years Trouville drifted out of fashion. Today Trouville is popular again and deservedly so. well as its familial trend.The charm of its port and its atmospheric waterfront brasserie Les Vapeurs is renowned as a sort of Norman equivalent
of brasserie Lipp in Paris. Trouville's fishing boats and narrow back streets and small family-owned shops give it a live and year-round feel that persists even in winter when Dauville can feel sometimes like a theme park in hibernation.
Activity centres on the daily fish market, built in 1935 on the site of former
markets
, and on Wednesays and Sundays it stretches out the length of the quay.
Today, numerous personalities have made Trouville to their favourite
vacation place: Gerard Depardieu, Valerie Kaprisky and many others.
Other place to visit in Trouville is the musée de Trouville, on the beach next to the casino. The history of the station narrated by different paintings, documents, posters, drawings. The local painters off course like Dufy, Van Dongen, Daumier.
Since Trouville had the intelligent idea to protect its patrimony since 1989, a lot of villas remain in a 19th century state, showing in what wealth those people lived. You can see a few beautiful species, walking down the "promenade des planches", departing for the extravagant but charming casino. Though not so grand as its neighbour's, the one armed casino bandits at Trouville casino pay out less and more often than at Deauville. Built in 1912 it is unimaginably large, contains a water therapy center, a gala room and
conference halls, cinema restaurant and of course the gaming rooms, done out in the style of a Louisiana paddle steamer.
Bibliography
A holiday history of France, by Ronald Hamilton (London-Hogarth press), Region Normandie, ses merveilles, ses cicatrices, by Louis Letellier (ed. Cloison, Rouen 1995, La France des petits chemins: Normandie, by J. de la Valléé (ed. Cité presse, Paris 1998), Identity of France, by Fernand Braudel (London, Fontana Press), The French, by Theodore Zeldin (New York-Random House)