I Went To A Garden Party...

We awoke this morning to the hum of engines and the sound of water rushing by… our first morning underway. It was a cool, misty morning, with cloudy skies, but a promised forecast of sunshine had us very hopeful for a great day touring Claude Monet’s home and gardens.

We docked at the small town of Vernon (don’t pronounce the last ‘n’) about 45 minutes north of Paris by train or 10 hours or so by cruise boat down the winding Seine River. Vernon is a city of 25,000 inhabitants, and was built in the 9th century by Rollon, the first Duke of Normandy. It’s a quaint bedroom suburb of Paris, full of winding cobblestone streets with many fun shops and cafés.

Our first event of the day was to board buses and drive the 6 km to the town of Giverny (Gee-ver-NAY), the home of Claude Monet, and a mecca for fans of Impressionist art. I don’t know much about art, but I do know that I like Impressionism because you don’t have to put in as much detail. A lot is left up to the imagination of the viewer. Kind of like the difference between reading a book and seeing the movie.

Monet’s home and gardens sit at the base of a small set of hills in a little village about half-way between Paris and the Atlantic coast. The streets of the small village are so small, coach buses have to park in a lot off the main road, but you have a nice walk through the narrow town streets past some cafés, gift shops, and several small museums of Impressionist art. It is set up as a tourist spot, and admittance costs about 6 Euros, which was covered by the Cruise.

The gardens were absolutely amazing. A large pond is surrounded by over-hanging willows, rushes, and trees hanging branches. A small path winds around the water, fed by a babbling brook, all painstakingly maintained by a hard-working staff that was busy pulling weeds and trimming trees and flowers the whole time we were there.

As we wound our way around the tiny lake, every vantage point offered another beautiful vista to photograph. If only there weren’t people lined up around the path, the pictures alone would be pieces of art worthy of museum display. No wonder Monet was inspired to paint such masterpieces!

After leaving the pond, we wandered through his gardens that fronted his house. Monet apparently planted long rows of flowers based on color combinations, and let them grow fairly naturally, with little regulation other than containment. Every few steps is an assault of vibrant color and textures. I’m not a flower person, but I couldn’t help myself from taking photo after photo of these amazing plants.

Finally, we were able to tour his house. It is a typical large country townhouse, reminding me a lot of the houses in the Italian village I lived in when my dad was stationed in Aviano, Italy, back in the ‘70s. Most of the rooms were fairly small and confined, but the kitchen and dining rooms, where people tend to spend their time, where huge! The kitchen was a brilliant blue with half-tile walls, and a huge stove and fireplace. The dining room was a bright yellow, with matching yellow cabinets, table and chairs. The yellow china cupboards were filled with blue dishes, which would surely provide a wonderful dining presentation. Definitely my favorite room of the house!

Our last stop was Monet’s workshop, a large single room barn structure that is now a gift shop. Large paintings covered each wall, along with picture of the artist in his hay-day. The roof was pretty much all glass, light being such and important part of an artist’s tool-bag, with movable shades available if needed. It looked like and artist’s paradise!

After lunch we had two options: one was a walk through the town of Vernon, and the other was water-color lessons by a local artist. Laura and the gang chose the walk, while I, and seven other bold souls chose the water-color lessons. It was an interesting experience: The instructor gave us paints and water and a few quick instructions on getting started (mostly where the horizon line was), and then cut us loose! An hour later we had our first impressionistic water-color… I’m not sure anyone but the artist can tell what it is, but again, that’s the beauty of Impressionism, right???

Dinner was a bit later this evening, so I took a stroll up through town to see what I had missed. I found Vernon to be a beautiful, vibrant place with lots of neat old homes, nice stores, old churches and lots and lots of café’s and bakeries. I wish more of the towns in the US were like this. Somewhere in the rush to suburbia, we’ve lost this feeling of closeness and community. Makes me glad we’ve chosen to stay in our little house in Zelienople, where we can walk to any place in town, know a lot of the people we meet along the way, and have a Main Street that is fairly busy and vibrant.

After dinner the girl who gave the water-color lessons gave a nice little presentation on the history of Impressionism, and showed off some of her works. It was nice background to everything we had seen and done today.

Tomorrow we move on down the river, and deeper into history, to Rouen - the capital of Normandy.