"Emily's best of Haute Normandie" Top 5 Page for this destination Haute-Normandie by aemilys

Rain gear

The Haute Normandie region is a major part of my stress reduction regime. One weekend a month I take off and because the region is so close to Paris it's a perfect destination. The region is composed of two departments, the Seine Maritime (76) and the Eure (28). Most of my visits have been to the Seine Maritime but I hope to make up for that in the future.

And here I might as well explain the difference between departments and regions. France is made up of 100 departments which are divided into 26 regions (22 in metropolitan France and 4 overseas). The departments are where the zip codes come from, for example, I live in Paris and so my zip code starts with 75 because Paris is department number 75, then since I live in the 19th arrondisement my zip code ends with 19, it has a zero in the middle because all zip codes have 5 digits, therefore 75019. If I lived in Seine Maritime (I wish), my zip code would start with 76 and so on for all the other departments of France.

Regions are large and are most often composed of several departments, the divisions exist mostly on an administrative level and concern local government. Here is a link for info on all of Normandy which includes two regions Haute and Basse Normandie and 5 departments (Calvados, Eure, Manche, Orne, and Seine Maritime).

• Pros:Close to Paris, the sea air, and I am Normande in my soul