Day 3  Vernon, Giverny, and the Monet Gardens

We left Paris during the evening of Day 2 and began our trip down the Seine River.  The river winds around Paris so it seemed a long time before we were out of Paris and its suburbs.  We arrived at Vernon at 6:30 a.m.  The trip had been so smooth, even going through two locks, that we had hardly noticed that we were moving.  We could see Paris and its suburbs go by, but after dark, which was not until 10:00 p.m., we only noticed movement when the occasional light from a house or small town went by.

We had breakfast on the boat and boarded buses for the short trip to Giverny for a visit to Monet's house and gardens.  This was another clear sunny day rising from the lower 60's into the lower 80's (F)) -- absolutely perfect weather.  We arrived at Giverny by 9:30 a.m. and found that there were already several bus loads of people ahead of us.

First we, and several hundred other people, walked around the water lily pond that was so famously portrayed in a number of Monet's paintings and was instrumental in inspiring Monet in many of his other paintings -- perhaps in his role in developing the impressionist style of painting.  The water lily pond was about 30 meters long and about 10 meters wide in the midst of willow trees with a clear stream flowing into and out of the pond.  It had patches of water lilies floating and blooming throughout the pond.  There were a number of other water plants growing in the pond, but it has been maintained as a pond of water lilies (we saw a man in a small boat maintaining the pond).  There were some smaller water birds in the pond, swimming and walking on the water lily pads.  These birds had webbed feet, but they were not ducks such as I had seen before.

The trail around the pond crossed the stream with two picturesque bridges and wound among carefully landscaped grounds.  There were hundreds of kinds of flowers blooming along the trail, some of which we were familiar with and others that we had never seen before.

Next we toured the gardens that are adjacent to the pond area.  In these gardens, it seemed that thousands of kinds of flowers were blooming.  Here again, we saw workers maintaining the gardens.  Although the plants were generally in wide rows with walkways in between, they were not perfectly orderly.  The plants were mixed together and generally  looked almost wild.

Then we toured Monet's house.  it was an old house with many rooms that ran on from one to another.  Each room was decorated in a specific color and was furnished with items characteristic of the late 1800's and early 1900's.  Monet lived there from 1883 until his death in 1926.  One room was had a number of his paintings hanging and leaning around the walls.  None of these looked familiar, so these must have been his less famous works.  This trip was interesting in that it provided insight into the life of a man whose work has helped shape the art world.

We returned to our boat for a late lunch and a walking tour of the town of Vernon.  This town had a number of half-timbered houses and stores that had been built as early as 900 (most were several hundred years later, but that means 1500's.)  Some were leaning so much that they appeared to be slowly falling over, but they had stood for a long time and probably will stand a while longer.  We went into a grocery store to look around and find out how the French in a smaller town lived.  I was just like a mid-sized store we could find at home.  It had foods, clothing, and other goods from around the world as well as from the local area.  We were given a taste of a pastry that had been freshly baked in a local bakery.  It was flaky and very sweet, but had no filling.

We went into the local church, Stiftskirche Notre Dame (Our Lady Collegiate Church).  It was fairly large and built in late Romanesque and early gothic, built between the 11th and early 17th centuries.  It was relatively plain, but had some ornate statuary and stained glass windows.  It had stone floors, walls, and pillars and had been extensively repaired after being bombed during World War II.  It looked like a working church, not just a tourist exhibition as some other cathedrals had appeared.

We returned to our boat for dinner and visiting with fellow travelers.  By now we know a number of people and have become comfortable on the boat.  Our boat remained docked in Vernon overnight.