Day 3 - Giverny and Vernon

We sailed along the Seine through the night and woke this morning docked at the city of Vernon in the region of Normandy.  Our day began with a visit to the home of Claude Monet in Giverny.  Looking for an area in the country that he could use to inspire his landscapes, Monet discovered Giverny in 1883 while traveling through Normandy by train.

The Seine River was the inspiration for many of the early impressionist paintings and Monet was traveling 50 miles from Paris for painting before he moved his family to Giverny by renting a farmhouse that he was later able to purchase after his paintings began to sell successfully.  Those sales were mostly sent to the United States and were so successful that he was able to purchase the farmhouse and the surrounding three acres for the price of four of his paintings by the time he was in his 50s.

Monet would paint and repaint the same scenes at different times of day and different days of the year.  His focus was on the light surrounding the objects rather than the objects themselves.  This became clear to collectors with his work known at the Haystacks - the location of which is now a parking lot.  They waited to tell us that until we were standing on that parking lot, so it was a bit sad.

When he began to sell his paintings successfully, he bought additional acres near his home and began to design and construct his own gardens.  There are two sections of gardens on his land - one organized into room-like areas and the other a water garden with water lilies and bamboo trees.  Monet held a tight hold of control over his gardens and was known to meet with his head gardener three times a day to inspect portions.  The water garden is where Monet painted his famous Water Lilies.  The water lilies were so important to him that he had one gardener on staff that was required to  spend each morning washing the water lilies from the dust that had settled on them from the dirt road.  Finally, Monet was so irritated with the dirt road that he volunteered to pay for the town to pave the road!

 

Monet designed the gardens to be a living work of art by choosing flowers with colors that contrasted and complimented each other.  The garden closer to the house was divided into "rooms" by large manicure shrubs.  Within each room, the flowers planted were of the same colors - white, red, violet, yellow, and even black!  The black flowers were a striking color that had tinges of red and deep violet depending on how the light hit the plants.  Laura and I enjoyed the quiet of those gardens after the crowds of the water garden.  We took a few minutes to sit on a bench in the quiet before moving on with the rest of the tour.

 

When we returned from Giverny, Laura and I took a brief water color class on the ship!!  Laura painted a cliff and I painted a meadow.  We were definitely beginners, but we had a good time!

 

After our watercolor class, we decided to take a walk through the little town of Vernon where the ship was docked.  We walked to the 11th century stone church called the Collegale Notre Dame Church.  The style of the church was a mixture of Romanesque and Gothic with spires, stained glass windows, and lantern towers.  It was heavily damaged in World War II, so most of the windows had to be replaced.

Vernon was founded in the 9th century by the Duke of Normandy and is located right on the Seine River.  The town square is less than two blocks from the docks.

While we had dinner, the ship began to travel further along the Seine and we should reach Rouen  by the morning!