Capsule Customs Travel

This was one of our earlier stops in our France trip and it easily remained my favorite among everything else. For any of those who watched Lupin on Netflix, this is the town at the end of Season 1. This isn’t the reason why I had wanted to go there and I didn’t know this was the place until after I bookmarked it for our itinerary. 

We arrived at the Étretat Mairie Bus Stop and walked into town from there. Town is quite cute. It has it restaurants, souvenir shops, ice cream, and the usual beachy town vibes. Once you make your way through town you end up at the promenade. Here you can access the free pebble beach and go swimming if you choose.

Since we got to town very early, the streets were quiet and empty. We took the right at the promenade to hike up d’Amont first. At the end of the walkway there were stairs that lead up to the hiking path. At the top of the path is Chapelle Notre-Dame-de-la-Garde and Les Jardins d’Etretat.

We kept going until we got to the La Falaise d’Amont part of the cliff, known as the ‘elephant’. At the top there are no fences or railings. Please be careful and don’t get too close to the edge. There was a path curving down and as Brittany leaves no path untraveled, we, meaning I had to follow it. There was steps, railings, and picturesque stops along the way. We walked around and couldn’t stop taking photos. We lost track of time and before we knew it my first camera battery was dead.

Knowing we only had the day to spend here we scurried back to the promenade. On our way down did we realize how much more people had arrived, town was packed (about noon). We stopped at a bench to eat sandwiches we packed, and ran to the other side: Falaise d’Aval.

The hike up to d’Aval had no stairs and was steeper than d’Amont. There were a few railings along the way and in certain spots. You can see a golf course tucked away in the distance. At the top of the cliff is a small cave known as ‘La chambre des demoiselles, Cave ‘Trou de l’Homme. You can walk across a bridge and step inside a small portion of the rock. We also noticed here that the tide became so much higher than it was in the morning.

As I mentioned earlier, the end of the show, Lupin, was filmed here. Arsène Lupin is a character from novels written by Maurice Leblanc. This location is important because the author lived in town. His house is now home to the Clos Lupin Museum. The museum is a selfed guided tour by an audio device.

After the museum we still had plenty of daylight and curiosity bit me. When we hiked up the north side we didn’t know it was low tide or how ‘low’ low tide really was. We noticed the difference when we hiked up the south side. Now, I really wanted to go back to the north cliffs and I’m so glad we did. We could clearly see a major difference from low and high tide. High tide was way higher than we both expected.

The difference between the photos from the am and pm is insane! In person we knew the tide changed, but it wasn’t until we got to look at the photos did our jaws drop.

I took similar pictures and put them next to each other for a side comparison. Left side is AM Low tide photos and right side is PM High tide photos.

North side hike looking at Falaise d’Amont (elephant).

North side hike looking back at Falaise d’Aval.

On top of Falaise d’Amont (elephant) looking more North.

Traveling to Étretat Cliffs from Paris:

If you were driving a car, the trip from Paris to Étretat would be about 3 hours. We didn’t have nor did we rent a car, so we depended on public transportation. From our Airbnb we took the metro to Gare Saint-Lazare. We booked our tickets a month in advance for the 8:37AM train. We took it to Gares Le Havre. We didn’t go directly to Étretat, we stopped at our Airbnb and the next morning we went to Étretat. Regardless from our Airbnb or Le Havre it’s the same bus line to get to Étretat. Bus Line 13 all the way to the Mairie stop. Bus 13 is a local line and we just got our tickets at the station. **You can’t buy bus tickets on the bus! So make sure you buy your return tickets as well**

Paris Gare Saint-Lazare -> Gares Le Havre (Train)

Gares Le Havre -> Bus Line 13 -> Mairie Stop (Bus)

Conclusion: Étretat Must See Day Trip!

Even though we were on vacation, I do appreciate getting to things early, and our timing was impeccable for this day trip. I loved being outside all day. Hiking each side was awesome, and hiking up the North side twice was worth it!

The magnitude of the cliffs just take your breath away. I have never felt so insignificant compared the size and mass of nature.