When To Go

When To Go

July and August -- when French families vacation -- are the busiest months here, but also the most activity-filled: concerts are presented every evening at Mont-St-Michel, and the region's most important horse races are held in Deauville, culminating with the Gold Cup Polo Championship and the Grand Prix the last Sunday in August. June 6, the anniversary of the Allied invasion, is the most popular time to visit the D-Day beaches. If you're trying to avoid crowds, your best bet is late spring and early autumn, when it's still fairly temperate. May finds the apple trees in full bloom and miles of waving flaxseed fields spotted with tiny butter-yellow flowers. Some of the biggest events of the region take place during these seasons: at the end of May Joan of Arc is honored at a festival in Rouen, and there's jazz under the apple trees in Coutances; the first week of September in Deauville is the American Film Festival, and the last week sees the nationally acclaimed blues music festival in Lisieux. Winter offers quieter pleasures: the lush Normandy countryside rolling softly under a thick tent of clouds so low you can almost touch them; the strange desolate poetry of the empty D-Day beaches; intimate evenings in casinos with the fun-loving locals for company, or a good conversation with the less-harried hosts in a quiet country inn; and a last burning snifter of calvados in front of a roaring Norman hearth.