Saturday morning in Honfleur. It's market day in the ancient fishing village on the Normandy coast, and the old ladies have been out early in the square setting up their goods on the dew-washed cobblestones: stands of shelves packed with glimmering bottles of Bordeaux and Calvados; crisp baskets of fresh-cut flowers and potted plants hang beneath canvas awnings; long wooden tables brim with farm produce - melons, grapes and tomatoes - all of it pristine and inviting, fussed and polished and picked over by their proprietors.

The square is framed by shops and restaurants, and down a narrow lane leading to the old dock is the ancient wooden church, Église Ste-Catherine, its separate oak and chestnut belfry solid and looming here since the Hundred Years War. Wide patches of blue are starting to appear overhead through the sea mist, and off to the west, across the World War Two landing beaches, the sky is already completely clear. It's going to be a nice day.

Our hotel is Le Cheval Blanc (The White Horse), a Belle Epoch sprawl crouched along the waterfront - creaky, comfortable, and lovingly atmospheric. Through the large open window of my chamber this morning had come the glare of the water below, reflecting off the high white ceiling to awaken me; that, and the sounds of the harbor: seagulls screeching over a fishing vessel passing the jetty, the warp and slap of the tourist boat tied directly below, the swish of bicycle tires passing beneath me on the wet street.

Honfleur has been famous for centuries. Reachable from Le Havre over a marvelous cable-stayed bridge floating like a gossamer seabird across the mouth of the Seine, it is an historic first stop down the coastline of Normandy along the English Channel to Deauville, Bayeux, and eventually, the Allied landing beaches. Beyond to the west and south is most of the rest of Normandy, the Contentin Peninsula jutting out into the channel, then the coastline below it curving down the Bay of Biscay to Spain. It is a region of particular appearance and architecture, of farm and field, of tiny villages outside medieval cities coiled around great vaulted cathedrals, of narrow winding country lanes where high stone fences spring up to mask the thatched-roof houses behind, and mosaic dovecotes squat clucking in hay-strewn courtyards. Across the bursting fields, turreted châteaux rise from gentle slopes, and along the roads, timbered villas are glimpsed behind screens of poplars.

Honfleur itself probably dates from the 10th century, and has been an artist's colony and tourist attraction of international renown for a good part of that time. What a crowded scene of poets and painters it must have been in this tiny village: the landscapist and impressionist Boudin (who was born here); such other impressionists as Monet and Dufy; the poet and opium-eater Baudelaire; Flaubert, he of the classic "Madame Bovary," who stayed in town with his aged mother; and immortal others. Each season, a new generation arrives seeking inspiration, to try and capture the charm and the ever-changing light. Reaping this harvest, more than a dozen art galleries are tucked along the streets, around the square and down on the harbor front.

While the town itself is wondrous to explore, it's that waterfront that draws the fascination. The buildings are stacked on end like pastel cigar boxes: no more than six or seven stories high, never more than two or three windows wide. Jammed together cheek by jowl, their slate and timber facings color the mood of the hour like the daubs on an artist's palette. The sun arrives and departs, and on a good summer's day, it's entirely possible for a visitor to spend the entire time along the quay, moving from table to table, café to bistro, following the shifting light, the reflections and patterns. It's not hard to do: sipping hot chocolate and nursing a feathery croissant from a tiny corner pâtisserie in the early warmth, a morning walk, then appetite renewed, a shaded luncheon of cold lobster bisque and a sparkling glass of chablis under a brightly colored umbrella. After five o'clock, the sun sinks low enough behind the tall buildings that only the eastern side of the harbor is sun-washed. Here we sit on white plastic chairs around a small formica-topped table cluttered with tall, beaded Heinekens, watching the international parade of tourists swirl past like brightly painted horses on a merry-go-round of trendy vacation wear.

Around 7 o'clock, the sun finally slips below the buildings opposite, and even though it will be full light for hours, it is time to move back up into town to yet another restaurant - and just to prove we can do it - tuck into an all-crustacean dinner - shrimp cocktail, cold shrimp salad, then crisp fried shrimp with a lemon sauce, accompanied by a worthy Pouilly Fumé, and then, afterward, a drippy glacé from a tiny quick-service window. Eating establishments, in fact, seem to be everywhere, along with creperies, tearooms, pizza parlors, bars, pubs, saloons and taverns. With the seafood practically waiting quay-side to jump onto the serving dish, it remains only for the diner to choose the desired ambience.

It's impossible for a visitor to this part of Normandy not to be aware of the great invasion of June 6, 1944. The signposts are everywhere, marking locations of the prolonged battles that took place in through here that summer as the Allied armies broke out of the beachhead and surged through France on their way to Germany. Certainly for American visitors, and for British, and Canadians, and the French, nearly 60 years after the fact, the landing beaches do, and should, hold a strong attraction.

The weather has cooperated with a breezy sunny day, and walking along the sand, once again I am struck by the utter serenity and beauty of the long orange beach, the hazy, granite brown bluffs rising sharply upward on the land side for miles ahead, the channel deep blue-green and white-capped. In front of the resort town of Arromanches - Gold Beach for the British landing forces - the rusted hulks of the Mulberries - artificial harbors towed here on D-Day - rest in the sand where they have since 1944, dumped there by a tremendous June storm. Children play in their shadows, and small sailboats bob past the sunken breakwaters further out. There are relatively few people on the beach, and further west, the dunes are even more deserted: visitors prefer Deauville and Trouville, popular beach resorts and casinos since the 19th century.

This part of Normandy has changed since I was here 20 years ago - more crowded. The last time, I drove from Deauville along the beaches, down the sandy narrow roads with their right-angle turns in the villages, and past the hedgerows that made fighting so difficult for the Allies, always the wave-swept Channel glimpsed on my right through the grassy dunes.

But this is a Saturday in August, and where once was empty bluff is now motels and vacation camps, so it's easier to drive inland on the motorway, and then cut back toward the water to St-Laurent-sur-Mer, where the American Military Cemetery is located. Directly below it, on Omaha Beach, the low wall of slag the troops so desperately tried to shelter behind on D-Day is gone, eroded or washed away. The sand slopes up from water's edge, the low tide trapping rippling pools that reflect the sky. Further on, dense shrubbery climbs past a pock-marked observation bunker, and then the climber is over and into the trees beyond.

The American cemetery behind the pines framing the skyline on this bright clear morning is a green expanse of solitude and sadness, the national flag snapping in the sea breeze. There are 9,385 white Carrara marble crosses for the men who died here that day and in the days ahead, each one stark and simple, gleaming and reflective in the sun. It's a good place to be. The ample parking lot is convenient and about half-full, and the modest information building is a mix of languages as visitors talk softly around the displays. Outside, in the cemetery, a huge open and airy marble memorial faces the crosses, a semi-circular colonnade with loggias at either end containing narratives and a huge granite wall map of the operations. On the east side of the memorial is a semi-circular garden listing the names of 1557 missing. It is satisfying peaceful.

Saturday night back in Honfleur, and along the waterfront it has grown chilly with the late hour. A few remaining groups remain huddled around tables on the darkened quay, reluctant to let go of the day, but the lights of the establishments are slowly going out around the harbor. A full moon has been gliding around since even before sunset, and it reflects quietly off the rippled waters of the harbor. The boats within the basin are buttoned up tight as they bob gently at their moorings, rigging clinking against aluminum masts. Above the shops, the windows reflect only the moonlight, and below, on the cobblestones, the last stragglers of the evening return quietly to their rooms.