Wednesday 24th July – Jenny’s birthday , Monet’s Garden, Chinese restaurant
Writer: Jenny
I woke up a little later than everyone and walked into the dining room to be greeted with “Happy Birthday” by everyone. It was lovely and it was a good way to start “my” day.
It was decided that we would go to Monet’s home and garden that day as it has always been on my wish list an as it was my day it was a fitting.
I received a present from Chris, a small world globe money box, to save for our next trip. Haha, or now he can say he “gave me the world”. I also received a nice watch and some perfume from Ewout, so I felt very spoilt.
We all sat down for our breakfast and worked out our plan for the day. It was decided we would go after lunch, but to spend some time in the pool in the morning as it was such a lovely day.
The weather for the day was looking to be beautiful and I couldn’t wait to drive the nearly 30 kms to our destination. So setting the Tom Toms to Giverny we all loaded into the cars and set off.
Arriving at the car park and walked up the road and around the back to the entrance, through the inevitable souvenir shop and out into a sunny flower filled vista.
My first destination was the home of Monet where he lived and painted and although you could only visit a few rooms it was interesting to see the room where he painted many of his famous works of art and see the view of his garden from the master bedroom.
We wandered through the flower filled garden beds down to the steps that lead under the road to the other side of the road where the famous water pond is situated. Following the path around a large stand of bamboo the vista opens up to show the lily pond surrounded by luxuriant plantings of trees and shrubs. It was quite busy here, everyone vying to get their best photo of such a famous scene with couples and singles posing before the pond and taking over the best spots.
We enjoyed the panorama, walking around the path, watching the other photographers and trying to get some good pictures for ourselves.
It was such a lovely afternoon and after a visit to the souvenir shop where we bought a small “house” for the front of the motorhome and then all gathered together for a drink at a local cafe.
The day before we had noticed an interesting looking Church on our drive through Mantes -la-Jolie and as it was on our way “home” we thought it would be worth looking at on our way. So setting our course for the centre of the city we found our way to the street where the Collegiate Church of Our Lady of Mantes, is situated. It is a large and historically important Catholic church constructed between c.1155 and 1350 in the small town of Mantes-la-Jolie, about 30 miles west of Paris. Although not a cathedral it was built on a cathedral-like scale. Its grandeur, its quirky design and its strong associations with the Capetian dynasty make the church particularly interesting to architectural historians. We arrived close to 6 pm when it was due to close by we had enough time to have a look inside and were able to witness the end of a small church service.
We had decided to eat out for my birthday and our next task was to find a restaurant to have something to eat. We walked around the town for a while, up and down some of the small streets and although we found bars and takeaways there didn’t seem to be anything suitable open, it then decided to start raining, so it was decided to head back towards our accommodation and see if we could find anything on the way. Noticing a Chinese Wok restaurant on the “corner” of a roundabout we diverted into their carpark and agreed that it would be a good choice for the evenings meal.
We all had a good meal, being the sort where you could choose from the buffet, all were catered for and we ate well and went home satisfied.
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