Honfleur (14 Calvados, Normandie - see map) is a delightful small harbour town on the Normandy coast just west of the Seine river estuary and Le Havre, now reached after crossing the elegant Pont de Normandie.
After the industrial and concrete-dominated arrival in Le Havre this comes as a welcome breath of fresh air and you start to feel that you are in the real France (as long as you ignore all the British yachts in the harbour - Honfleur being a favourite weekend cross-channel destination from the south coast marinas).
For the weekend of 30 September and 1 October 2006 they celebrate the 12th Annual Fete de la Crevette et de la Peche (shrimps and fishing) - with music, fireworks, cookery, parade, marine crafts etc. For more info see www.ot-honfleur.fr .
There is plenty of scope for confusion amongst novices on the naming of these crustaceans (in English almost as much as in French) - shrimps, prawns, scampi, crayfish.. Without going into the detailed classifications and natural history we'll try to summarise..
Crevettes grises (grey) are shrimps - the larger ones also known as Gambas, whilst Crevettes roses (pink) are prawns - tending to be a bit bigger than the shrimp.Ecrivisses are crayfish, whilst langoustines are scampi - Langoustes being larger, more like a small spiny lobster. At the top of the pile is Homard, the lobster.
