Giverny

The boat docked at Vernon, a pretty little town on the river and we took a very short bus ride to Giverny. A walk through a winding tunnel under the main road brought us to Monet’s water garden through which flows a diversion of the river Epte, said diversion created by Monet.

How do I begin to describe the water garden! It is breathtaking. A winding path, bordered by all sorts of plants and trees takes you to the famous lily pond. The nympheas were not in bloom of course, but the pads were there and one could easily recognize them from Monet’s paintings. The weeping willows bent down to the water; the Japanese bridge gleaned green under a canopy of wisteria. Yellow Viburnums; pink dogwoods; bronze Japanese maples,; tulips and pansies of all colors; pink, purple, white, orange, yellow azaleas; perennials of all types; trellised roses ready to bloom, peonies about to burst; clematis……..all absolutely breathtaking. A shrine to impressionism!

We then went under another road into the main gardens in front of Monet’s house. The gardens are laid out in long rows in front of the house. The garden is bordered by trellised roses. Beds of tulips of all colors, pansies of all colors, blue myosotis, white, pink and lavender phlox, deep purple hyacinths, blue centaurea, blue Siberian iris, purple bearded iris (though only a few were in bloom), yellow yarrow and alyssum….and many, many more.

We visited Monet’s house, which he finally bought after renting it for so many years. Every room is painted in a different pastel: greens, blues, yellows. The dining room was stunning in yellow, as was the kitchen with blue and white tiles. I could have moved right into this house! Monet had an amazing collection of Japanese prints, one of the largest in private hands – over 300. Every wall was filled with them.

Monet first discovered Giverny when he saw it in 1883 from a train (yay for the railroads!) and the little town has remained unchanged since then. Monet lived here until his death in 1926. The property was bequeathed to the Académie de Beaux-Arts by Monet’s son Claude. Monet originally bought the “Press House” with an orchard, known as the Clos Normand which he changed into a garden of flowers. Then he began to limit himself to painting his water garden.

I must say that, despite all the beauty of the more formal gardens and the house, the water garden is the most spectacular. I could have spent hours and hours there, watching the light change the reflections in the pond. One could easily understand what was going through Monet’s mind.

In the afternoon, we sailed to Mantes la Jolie. The group going to Versailles left us there and we sailed on to Conflans Ste. Honorine, where we picked up the Versailles crowd. Conflans is pretty little town, where the Oise and the Seine meet, with a church whose roof is made of Burgundy-style colored tiles, such as we will see in Beaune. That evening we had the captain's farewell reception and dinner.

We passed through 6 sets of locks going down and coming back up the Seine. Not quite the Panama Canal, but interesting when we were awake....I slept through a lot of them.