Etretat sits about two hours south of Le Touquet down the Normandy coast, and the drive in is half of why you come. You leave the dunes of the Côte d'Opale, cut down through Fécamp, and at some point the road turns and you find yourself looking at white chalk cliffs that you have seen a hundred times in Monet paintings without ever quite registering they were a real place. The town itself looks like the houses have been in competition with each other for the last century.