How do you get from Paris to La Ferme Saint Siméon?

By car it is about two hours, the hotel says, and more on a Friday. By train, go from Paris Saint-Lazare to Trouville-Deauville, about two hours, then take a taxi of about nine miles: Honfleur has no station.

Can you take a painting lesson at the hotel?

Yes. A local artist gives two-hour watercolor classes in her gallery on the grounds, in the gardens or facing the estuary, depending on the weather, for €150 a person (November 2026).

Which rooms did Monet and Corot stay in?

The hotel says Monet's room was number 22 and Corot's studio was room 19. Both are Deluxe rooms in the historic house, and both can be booked.

Which rooms have a private hammam?

Twenty of the thirty-five, mostly in the Pressoir and the Pavilion. Ask when you book: every room is different.

How far is Honfleur's old town?

About ten minutes on foot from the hotel.

La Ferme Saint Siméon, Honfleur: the painters' inn

Friday, afternoon

Two hours to the estuary

La Ferme Saint Siméon is a farm inn on the hill above Honfleur, in Normandy, looking down on the mouth of the Seine. From Paris it is about two hours by road, the hotel says. Leave before the Friday traffic does; without it, the drive from the Place de la Concorde is about two and a quarter hours.

By train, Honfleur has no station. Take the train from Saint-Lazare to Trouville-Deauville, about two hours, then a taxi for the last nine miles. Count on about two and a half hours door to door. Landing at Charles de Gaulle or Orly on Friday morning, ask the hotel for its car: it runs a chauffeured shuttle for up to four people. If you come by helicopter, there is a pad on the grounds.

The farm is three buildings in a garden. The historic house wears a coat of blue-green slate and holds the bar and the restaurant. The Pavilion is half-timbered, with wooden staircases outside. The former press house, the Pressoir, holds the renovated rooms. The Boelen family has run the place for three generations, and the concierge, Laurent Dauvert, is a Honfleur man: ask him for anything in the town.

Friday, evening

Room 19, or room 22

Around 1840, the hotel says, young painters began to find a room here with Mother Toutain, who had run the inn since 1825. It names Boudin, Jongkind, Corot, Courbet, Bazille and Monet among them. When they could not pay, it says, they often left a painting.

When the painters could not pay for their beds, the hotel says, they left a painting.

Two of their rooms can still be booked by number. The hotel says Monet’s was 22, and that Corot worked in 19 because of its window, a great corbelled bay over the estuary that let him watch every change in its colors. Both are in the historic house, in the category the hotel calls Deluxe, from 323 to 495 square feet. Ask for one of them by number. If you want space as well as the view, the Ciels de Seine suite, about 860 square feet, takes its name from Boudin’s paintings of skies and has a fireplace and a view of the estuary.

Corot's room: tall windows hung with gray curtains, the sea beyond, a Venetian glass chandelier, two round-backed chairs at a small table. Monet's room: oak-paneled walls, a white bed with a tufted bench at its foot, windows on the garden.

There is a trade. Twenty of the thirty-five rooms have a private hammam, and the hotel describes them in the Pressoir and the Pavilion rather than the historic house. Choose the painter or the steam, and ask. On the hotel’s own site, the night of Thursday, November 12, 2026, was €621 for two, breakfast extra.

Have dinner at La Boucane, a seventeenth-century thatched cottage in the garden. The hotel says Monet and his friends painted it often; the name means “the old cottage” in the Norman dialect. Gérard Bonnefoy, whom the hotel calls a former Michelin-starred chef, cooks fish and shellfish there, and a menu in honor of Mother Toutain.

A window set deep in the thatch of La Boucane, white roses in front of it. Inside La Boucane: half-timbered walls, dark wooden tables set with glasses, a framed snow scene.

End at the bar, by the fire. The bartender, Fabrice, was crowned French cocktail champion in June 2021, the hotel says. Ask for the Flip Toutain, created for the inn’s two hundredth year from nineteenth-century recipes, or take a calvados.

Saturday, morning

Down the hill

The old town is ten minutes on foot. If you would rather ride, the hotel’s carriage, two Percheron horses driven by Benoît Farain, takes an hour around the town for €110. On Saturday mornings the market sets up by Sainte-Catherine, a church the townspeople built of wood in the second half of the fifteenth century, with the know-how of shipbuilders, its bell tower standing apart. The church is open every day from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m.

Then the Musée Eugène-Boudin, on the rue de l’Homme de Bois. Boudin and his friend Alexandre Dubourg founded it in 1868, and it hangs the painters who stayed up the hill: Boudin, Courbet, Jongkind, Monet. It is closed on Tuesdays and open from 10 to noon and from 2 to 5:30 or 6. Its published hours stop on November 15 and resume on April 1, 2027: check before a winter weekend. Adults pay €9. Normandy’s other great sight wants its own trip: on Monday, February 22, 2027, the great tide comes back to Mont-Saint-Michel at sunrise.

Saturday, afternoon

A brush and the estuary

Back at the farm, the class you booked with the room. A local artist teaches watercolor for two hours, in her gallery on the grounds, in the gardens or in front of the estuary, depending on the weather. It costs €150 a person, and no talent is assumed. The hotel’s history page adds that one of its painting teachers comes from one of Honfleur’s oldest fishing families.

An old cardboard box of Lefranc paint tubes on a round wooden garden table, a hedge behind.

This is the point of the weekend. The painters came for the light on the water, which changes by the hour. Sit where they sat and try to keep up with it.

After the class, take tea at the bar: scones, savories and the pastry chef’s cakes, served by the fire or facing the estuary. Keep your watercolor. Nobody here will ask you to pay with it.

In the garden, an exhibition traces the painters who stayed here, with their works and lives. It is open to anyone who walks in. If the weather holds and you would rather paint farther out, the kitchen packs a picnic for €50 a person.

Saturday, night

Dinner by the fire

Have a drink first on the bar’s terrace if the evening is warm. Les Impressionnistes is the main dining room: old beams, fireplaces, seascapes on the walls and the estuary in the windows. The chef, Matthieu Pouleur, serves a menu called Nuances, in four, six or eight courses.

Les Impressionnistes: dark beams, framed seascapes, a long wooden table of flowers and glasses, windows on the water.

Some of it comes from the grounds. The kitchen garden was planted in 2020 on the spot where Mother Toutain kept hers. The honey is from the hotel’s own hives, the apple juice from its orchard, and the house makes its own walnut oil.

Sunday

The last hour

Breakfast is served in the same room, facing the estuary, at €42 a person: homemade jams and yogurts, honeycomb, regional cheeses, crêpes, teurgoule, the Normandy rice pudding, and champagne for those who want it.

The terrace: white-clothed tables under black umbrellas, a stone fountain, the estuary beyond the hedge.

Keep the last thing for the Spa Potager, in Mother Toutain’s old vegetable garden and a former painter’s studio. It is booked privately, in 90-minute slots between 9 a.m. and 8:30 p.m., for one to four people, at €220. There is a sauna that looks at the estuary, a hammam and a hot tub outdoors. Take a morning slot before you check out, and look at the water one more time from the tub.

The Spa Potager: a small brick and half-timbered studio, a round steel hot tub in a stone surround, wildflowers in front.