Trouville-sur-Mer: Belle Époque Beauty on the Normandy Coast

For Alec Lobrano, the Normandy seaside charmer is like an old friend. Here he presents his personal history with the chic, inviting haven which keeps luring him back.

For most travellers, first impressions remain the wick of all subsequent visits to the same destination. This has always been my experience anyway, so that even now that I’ve probably been to the pretty little Norman fishing port of Trouville-sur-Mer a hundred times since I moved to France more than 30 years ago, all of these subsequent visits are just accretions to the Thursday afternoon in May when my train from Paris arrived at the Gare Paris Trouville.

Under oyster grey skies, I walked to my hotel, Le Central on The Boulevard Fernand Moureaux, overlooking the fish market on the banks of the Touques river as it flows into the English Channel. It was raining lightly, but I didn’t mind, because the briny air was so invigorating and the cries of the seagulls constantly reminded me that I was by the seaside.

I’ve long believed that being on the edge of the sea operates very deeply on the human brain. Could this be about the freedom of infinity that the sea represents, or perhaps a nostalgia for the salty waters of our births, both as individuals and as a species? Or do we love the delicious stink of salt air because it puts everything into perspective, with all of these thoughts decorated by the same fine lacy reminder of our own mortality, because the sea is forever and we’re not? There’s no way of saying, really, but I think all of these things explain the joy most people experience by the sea. An additional factor for me is doubtless that it’s part of the eternal reality imprinted on my mind’s eye by the seaside town where I grew up in New England. For me, the sea is home.

I liked my little hotel room under the eaves at Le Central when I went upstairs to leave my bag, and then promptly thumped back downstairs for some dinner in the brasserie, where I had a perfect meal of mussels steamed in herbs, shallots and white wine; a big plate of hot, crunchy, golden frites to go with them; a happy hunk of perfectly ripened Camembert; a dainty little green pitcher of Muscadet; and finally a snifter of superb Calvados to numb my nerves.

The following morning I was going to interview Marguerite Duras, one of the most famous writers in France. She lived in a flat in the old Hotel Les Roches Noires, a grand stone-and-brick Second Empire building on the edge of the beach, built in 1866, just a few years after the opening of the rail line from Paris launched the port as a holiday destination for Parisians.

On the train from Paris, I’d finished rereading Duras’ sultry novel, The Lover, an autobiographically inspired account of a 15-year-old French girl marooned in Sa Đéc a town in the Mekong River Delta – with her schoolteacher mother and brothers. The handsome son of a wealthy Chinese merchant family in Sa Đéc offers her a ride back to her boarding school in Saigon, and she smashes at least a dozen different taboos by becoming his lover. Duras went on to have a remarkable career as a novelist and screenplay writer and never ceased thumbing her nose at convention – she was, for example, one of the signatories of the 1971 Manifesto of 343, so named for the 343 woman who publicly admitted they’d had an abortion in a bold act of protest advocating for the legalisation of the practice.

I’d been told by another femme extraordinaire, Regine, the flame-haired nightclub owner who had a boîte (club) in Deauville, across the river from Trouville, that I should go visit the “irascible old scribe” because “elle est folle mais c’est une vraie personage” (she’s crazy but quite a character). But then so was Regine, to whom I’d been delivered directly from Paris by her chauffeur and who greeted me in her boudoir at 10pm (she didn’t do interviews during the day) in a leopard-print gown with a little buffet of smoked salmon, caviar, blinis, Champagne and cocaine on the table in front of her settee. So a year later, I’d suggested a story on Marguerite Duras to the paper I was working for, the editor said yes, and to my surprise, Duras agreed to see me.

A few hours before this appointment, however, I found myself terrified. I feared that in the ears of this great lady my questions would sound as superficial and tinny as they doubtless were. But in the end, she was kind – sort of. We met at a tearoom a few doors down from my hotel. It was an overcast morning and she was wearing sunglasses, a poppy-coloured scarf and Argyll knee socks with her brogue-like shoes.

I confessed that reading The Lover had inflamed my 15-year-old imagination while I was working as a page in the public library of Weston, Connecticut, and this seemed to please her to no end. She asked me a question of such a personal nature it shocked me out of my wits but I was delivered from having to answer by the arrival of a stout waitress. Duras ordered some sort of ham and cheese tourte and tea, and I had a coffee.
“What is it that you most like about Trouville?” I asked her. She sighed. “I thought you were going to be more interesting, so let’s get all of that out of the way. Trouville is snug and pretty and bookish, and it has some very good restaurants. It’s easy to get to from Paris by train, people leave me alone here, and then there’s the sea. I could stare at the sea by the hour the same way I used to walk down to the edge of the Mekong and stare out at its vastness when I was a girl.

“I think I am in love with water, except as a drink,” she chuckled. “I love it as oceans and seas and rivers and lakes, but not in my glass.” She sipped her tea. “And the people here read and are intelligent, but they’re not pretentious idiots like they are in Saint-Germain-des-Prés.”

No wonder I liked Trouville, I thought on the way home (never call it its full name of Trouville-sur-Mer, by the way, unless you want be taken for a hick). And Duras really had summed up this charming little seaside village to a T. “Trouville a un charme très violent. Immédiat. Je ne connais personne qui,
dès la première visite, ne rêve d’y revenir,” (Trouville has a very violent charm. It’s immediate. I know no one who doesn’t dream of coming back after their first visit), she wrote to a friend.

The world’s most beautiful beach

After Henri V landed in the estuary of the Touques river in 1417 to conquer Normandy, Trouville remained a quiet little fishing village until it was ‘discovered’ by painter Charles Mouzin in 1825. Attracted by the light off the English Channel and the beach itself, others followed, including Paul Huet, Alexandre-Gabriel Decamps. Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot, Eugène Boudin and Claude Monet. The writer Alexandre Dumas succumbed to its charms in 1831, followed by Gustave Flaubert, and their word-of-mouth recommendations of this crescent-shaped seaside village sparked the desire of Paris’ bohemian smart set, who flocked here after the train line from Paris opened in 1863.

With sea-bathing growing in popularity for its healthful properties, Trouville promoted itself as “La Plus Belle Plage du Monde” (the world’s most beautiful beach) and a casino was built to attract high rollers in 1847. After the success of the Hotel Les Roches Noires, the extravagant Trouville Palace opened right on the beach in 1910. The writer Marcel Proust summered at Les Roches Noires with his grandmother from 1880 to 1915, further adding to Trouville’s literary pedigree and popularity with writers and artists from Paris.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the Touques river, the Duc de Morny was engaged in the massive real-estate development project that gave birth to Trouville’s sister town of Deauville. As with so many siblings, their relationship is complicated and occasionally contentious, with fans of Trouville finding the patrons of Deauville too flashy, while these same types often wrinkle their noses at Trouville for being dull and smug.

Today, to use the geographical references of the Parisians who are the largest clientele for both towns, Trouville still likes to think of itself as Saint-Germain-des-Prés by the sea, while Deauville styles itself as sort of a Norman version of Cannes. One way or another, the tone of each of these towns is wonderfully different.

When I did a week’s cure at Les Cures Marine Hotel and Spa in Trouville, just after the Covid lockdowns in France had ended, it was amusing to go for a drink in the wood-panelled bar at Deauville’s famous half-timbered Hotel Normandy or maybe lunch at L’Essentiel, for the delicious Franco-Korean cooking of the two chefs in the kitchen, but mostly, like a limpet, I stick to Trouville, where I have my habits.

Now I usually stay at the Hotel Flaubert, an exceptionally comfortable and attractive 31-room hotel with wonderful sea views, eat at both Le Central and the more famous Les Vapeurs at least once during every visit, and always peruse the fish market in the morning to see what to have for lunch and dinner that day. Trouville also has an excellent bookstore, the wonderfully named L’Usage du Papier, which is a pleasure to browse in. More recently, this contentedly tradition-bound town has gained a trendy bistro with an irritating name, Turbulent, where the contemporary French bistro cooking is actually rather good.

Chef Scott Jarvis’ menu changes regularly and runs to dishes such as frog’s legs with merguez or sea snails escabeche with spicy mayonnaise.
Long walks on the beach are a daily pleasure, and occasionally I’ll revisit the Musée Villa Montebello, a Second Empire villa that’s a time capsule of what Trouville was like as it evolved from fishing village to demure resort.

Built in 1865 by the architect Jean-Louis Célinsky de Zaremba for the Marquise de Montebello, the handsome mansion has a superb view over the Bay of the Seine and an interesting collection of paintings, posters, prints, clothing and other items. This year it’s also hosting a fascinating show about the discovery of the Norman coast by painters like Raoul Dufy, Kees van Dongen, Raymond Savignac, Claude Monet and many more. “Trouville, c’est mon Amerique à mo”, runs from March 29 to September 21, and the title takes its name from a letter Dumas wrote to a friend after he’d chosen to stay in then quieter Trouville over the bourgeois Le Havre suburb of Sainte-Adresse (where Monet painted his famous Terrasse à Sainte-Adresse). What Dumas meant was that Trouville was the wild, unknown place where he felt free.

Even though it’s now become an old friend, it will always be that for me, too, because it’s where I go to shed anxiety, nurse sadness, retrieve my equilibrium and gently abrade my imagination so that it begins to surprise me again instead of running around in dulling circles. “I think staring out at the sea in Trouville with a hangover that’s bad but not embarrassing is one of life’s pleasures,” Duras confided. “Because it not only makes you see and accept yourself as who you are, but invites you to laugh at yourself as well.”

TROUVILLE ESSENTIALS

GETTING THERE

Trouville is a great stopping place if you’re taking a Brittany Ferries ship to or from Portsmouth (closest port: Caen-Ouistreham). www.brittany-ferries.co.uk. Otherwise, it’s an easy train ride from Paris and a great time out from the capital and all of its cultural duties.

WHERE TO STAY AND EAT

• Hotel Le Central, 5/7 Rue des Bains, Trouville, Tel. (33) 02 31 88 80 84. www.hotel-central-trouville.com
• Hotel Le Flaubert. Rue Gustave Flaubert, Trouville, Tel. (33) 02 31 88 37 23, www.flaubert.fr
• Les Vapeurs, 160 boulevard Fernand-Moureaux, Trouville. Tel (33) 02 31 88 15 24. Average à la carte €50.
• Turbulent. I Rue Durand-Couyère, Trouville. Tel. (33) 02 31 88 56 24. www.turbulent-trouville.com Average à la carte: €35-45.

VISITS

• Musée Villa Montebello, 64 Rue Général Leclerc, Trouville, Tel. (33) 02 31 88 16 26.
• Trouville, c’est mon Amerique à moi’, runs from March 29 to September 21. www.trouville.fr/Musee Villa Montebello
• L’Usage du Papier, 76 rue des Bains, Trouville, Tel. (33) 02 31 88 63 37, www.instagram.com/lusage.du.papier

TOURISM CONTACTS

• Trouville-sur-Mer tourist office en.trouvillesurmer.org
• Normandy Tourism en.normandie-tourisme.fr

From France Today Magazine

Lead photo credit : Port_de_Trouville-sur-Mer_-_Gabriela_Hengeveld