Giverny

Today was a day trip to Giverny and a step directly into tourism central. Who knew a tiny French town could physically hold so many people. If you do not know Giverny, this is where Claude Monet painted his water lilies. The GPS took the scenic road which was a bit annoying. Finally arriving and there already was an influx of tourists, making the one road hard to navigate. The first stop, quite unintentionally became the church at the end of the street which turned out to be the spot of Claude Monet's grave. A nice British gentleman was there looking for it and we walked the entire cemetery trying to find it. There are a couple of nice military memorials to a crashed plane but then we found the unpretentious grave, not too far from the entrance but a very simple memorial stone on a much larger grave.

Gluttons for punishment, it was time to reverse direction and play dodge the tourist and look for a parking lot-not that it was necessary as later in the day, everyone simply parked on the Main Street but as it was relatively early, that did not appear to be an option. Finally parked, the beeline was for Monet's garden, another good idea as at that point the line was about five minutes and it was 10 times that two hours later.

Inside the gardens are still flowering and everyone walks among the controlled pathways looking at a gardener's organized chaos. A path under ground leads to the water lily pond which was designed by Monet adjacent to his property and is where he painted all of his famous water lily paintings.

Amazingly for this late in the year, lots was still in bloom, especially the lilies themselves and everyone jockeyed for position on the two bridges to try to use our cameras to duplicate Monet's genius. There is no way we succeeded.

Next to the garden and the water lily pond is his house which is open for tours. They have copies of some of his work in his studio. The rest of the house is notable for the color scheme where whole rooms are bright yellow or variations of bright blue and a display of Japanese drawings.

After a quick lunch and a brief walking tour of the town that included houses turned into hospitals during WWI and the Monet bust, it was time to head back to Les Andelys.