Look up Giverny in France, and the first thing you will see is Claude Monet, the incredible impressionist painter most well known for the art of his water lily garden. The garden, Monet's house, and the land surrounding it, are a painting come to life. It is a town of great hills that rise up into the mountains, and while it is only a short train ride from Paris, one can easily forget that the city is so close to the French Capital. After the crowded streets of Paris, the rugged landscapes of Normandy, and the hectic life of driving from place to place, we were finally at the end of our journey.
Giverny Streets
Entering Giverny, one finds narrow roads and small houses, fresh flowers were in bloom all around and the hills were so verdant that I thought the color green was invented there. Our lodging was a lovely farmhouse hotel called Le
Reserve.It was neither fancy nor
auspicious, but comfortable and warm and I preferred it to all the other
chateaus and hotels save the one in Ambois.
Le Reserve
The house was owned by the family for almost four years,
and one of the staple features was a giant bear of a dog named “Flobert”. This giant lump usually had a place right at
the kitchen door but might occasionally lumber over to greet visitors. The outside is his domain, encompassing a
pasture for donkeys, apple orchards and a chicken coop. The whole area is a working farm and inside
the rooms are warm and small, possessing a distinct aspect of farm living,
rustic and comfortable.
Inside Le Reserve
Flobert, Chewbacca's cousin.
Our first stop was the muse Impressionists which had a
lovely outside garden. There were groups
of schoolchildren, maybe first to third grade who were taking in the
plants. What a wonderful place to
educate a child on the importance of art education, by taking them to see the
masters. The paintings here spanned
many artists from more realistic, to softer, to blotch paintings that all make
that unique impressionist look.
Thankfully, there were no cameras and for once, the guards here seemed
vigilant to catch anyone so much as looking at a painting funny.
The paintings here were awe inspiring to me. I am no artist, but I am a fond lover of
impressionists, specifically Renoir and Monet.
Some of the paintings were profound, others simple and every single one
was lovely. We spent a good amount of
time taking it all in.
Musee Garden
Claude Monet's house and his gardens sit almost in the center of this still eclectic artist community.Most everything is in five minutes of each other from his house to the local museum to the cemetery where he and his family are buried.It certainly is a tiny place, and quite removed from any sense of hustle and bustle the day we visited. I apologize for a lack of pictures, but photographs inside the house are not allowed, so I have to use stock ones found on the net.
Outside Monet's House
From the outside it’s
a walled compound of pink stucco with green shutters just like I’d read about
as a kid. Walking through the main hall,
you step into a souvenir shop that once served as Monet’s studio for painting
his water lily paintings. The room is
huge, with great glass ceiling that provides a tremendous amount of light. As a
man who loved light, Monet prized such a space.
Beyond were the gardens, but before I get to that I should
touch on the house. There is, once
again, no photography inside. However,
the walls everywhere are covered almost entirely with Japanese woodblock prints
– mostly bought by Monet from traders who had just gained access to Meiji era
Japan. I found this profound,
considering Monet gained such an influence studying Japanese masters like
Hiroshige and Hokusai. I recognized some
of their most famous works.
Monet's Dining Room, notice the Ukioe prints on the walls
Monet's Kitchen
Monet's Studio
Monet’s private space and studio was covered in paintings
and very small by comparison to the bigger space back in the shop but it was
still a nice area. The house itself is
two stories, large and long for his rather large family but it is not
grandiose. The true star of the show,
however are the two gardens.
After our venture to the D Day beaches my family and I were
physically and emotionally exhausted.
The whole of our journey came down like a lead weight on our shoulders,
and we only wanted to just coast to the end and go home. Unfortunately for us, we still had two more
towns before arriving back to Paris and flying home. We decided to take it one day at a time, and
sought nothing more than to go easy and relax.
The Town of Honfleur wasn’t easy to navigate by any the imagination.Finding the hotel was practically
impossible even with the navigation, and the streets were very narrow and
crowded. At one point we found ourselves going down the wrong way of a one way street. Our hotel was a former girl’s school and it had a certain whimsical charm with narrow wooden stairs that went up in different areas almost like a house in the Harry Potter books. In fact, it's safe to say this whole town feels like Diagon Alley in those books and the movies.
The town itself is a quaint little fishing village with a
working harbor near where the Seine meets the sea. We walked around and saw a beautiful church
to start, and walking inside was like walking into an overturned hull of a
ship. The church of Saint Catherine was built by ship makers, thus the odd shape shape of the roof which makes it look like an overturned galleon. Inside was even more strange because there were images of pagan figures like fauns and other things next to images of
saints here which is something I had never seen before. I felt like I had entered a great Viking mead hall. Maybe a flavor of Hogwarts too, with the huge bronze bird rector stand and the wooden paneling.
Beyond the “ship” church, the town had nice shops with
delicious looking foods but the highlight for me was the church itself. We had a nice lunch on the water, delicious sardines, as big as my hand with pom fritte (french fries). You certainly don't see sardines like these back home.
I think I was physically and mentally exhausted by this point because we retired to the hotel just after and I flopped on the bed to rest. As I lay there in the quiet space, I felt a little strange. We were nearing the end of our trip, and I had seen so much. Normandy had taken a lot out of me, but we still had one more highlight to see. Tomorrow
we would pass over the huge bridge spanning the harbor and head to Giverny.
(Above: Arromanches Today. Below: Arromanches in World War II. Note the remains of the "Mulberry Harbor" in the first picture.)
Our final stop in Normandy was Arromanches, the site of a temporary
harbor known as a “Mulberry Harbor.”
Huge blocks of cement were dropped off by ships to make a breakwater and
you can still see the remnants of these out in the bay beyond the town. It was interesting to see pictures of the
town in that time and compare it to the way it is now. One can almost imagine the bridges and
pipelines which supplied the war out here.
The true highlight of this area, and the end of our journey
through Normandy was a place called "Arromanches 360 Theater". It's exactly how it sounds, a circular room with screens all around that show movies which give a perspective looking back at everything we’d seen from Utah to Arromanches. It spanned the rise of the Nazis to the push
of the allies into Normandy to Paris.
The movie shows the sacrifice
and suffering – the triumph and tragedy of the war. The room reverberates with the sound of
guns, in one point a screen will show a gun firing and it literally felt like the shot traveled over my head, sailed a thousand feet and impacted with a heavy and thunderous explosion on the other side of the theater. The sheer sound of these guns, is deafening. There scenes and words of battle –
from great men like Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt and Charles de Gaulle. These are poignant, spelling out the need to route out tyranny and restore freedom. They reflect the sacrifice of the men who fought and died.
(About the Arromanches 360 Theater)
The movie ends showing the ruins of war fading into
the modern day. Watching this "then and now section, I felt a strange quiet settle into me. I saw the treasures
of France – the Bayeux Tapestry, the Mona Lisa, and areas of Normandy like Arrromanches. The guns went silent, the bloody battle ended, and all that was left was a strange and surreal peace. Just the sight of the Allies driving through the
Arc de Triumph is enough to stir anyone's patriotism.
(Video from youtube about the liberation of Paris)
The scenes of battle are grim, sometimes brutal, but true
to fact. It was a perspective of the
French and the Americans and I had no idea there was such a push on faith
itself during that time. It seems a far
cry from what we see today where we face a fight with a new evil as pervasive
and cruel as the Nazis. We see the same
warning signs, and for some reason, we treat them the same as was treated in
that time. I could not help but fear
that history, and these scenes, would soon repeat themselves.
(Vintage News Reel)
We emerged from the darkness of the theater and out into
warm sunlight and clear blue skies. It was
as if to give a light of hope from our stormy beginning. Like the war, we began against those stormy
seas and eventually ended our D-Day Journey in the warm light of day.
--- Final thoughts on Normandy At the end of our trip through Normandy I thought back to the stories of Reggi's father back in Bouceel, to the treasures I had seen in Paris or throughout France. Everywhere I had gone, the men on these beaches fought and died for the freedoms I now have. The privileges everyone possesses and the fact I could stand where they stood is because of these places and those people. Through the course of Normandy I ran the gamit of emotions, and the weather seemed to reflect real events. Normandy started out as a disaster for the allies, a disaster in stormy weather no less. It ended with a bright shining day for us, and for them in time. Emerging from that theater into the sun and looking out over the sea, thinking about all i had experienced is not something I am ever going to forget, nor would I ever wish to. I think that everyone should go to Normandy at least once in their life. You won't regret it.
