Great castle, great painter, great weather.

 During the night, our ship sailed from Paris to La Roche Guillot.  By road it, is only about 47 miles, but the Seine is well known for its lazy meanders, so by boat it’s about 86 miles.  That made no difference to us since we were sleeping…..  the morning started foggy and pretty, but cleared out  quickly, and our tour of the little village was clear, warm and sunny.  

 What an interesting history the village of La Roche Guillot has!  The castle that dominates its landscape has a thousand year history - starting in the Middle Ages, when the troglodytes started building in the white limestone cliffs- some of their original holes are still clearly visible as part of the castle.

 They then built the tower that now stands on the top of the more recent castle (about 1/3 of the tower height was lost during the revolution, but somehow the rest survived )

 

 The tower, and the stairs that lead to it are built from the limestone - the stairs literally dug into the cliffs. This over 1000 year old tunnel still leads from the modern castle to this great view of the Seine, its meanders and the valley - well worth the climb!

  The rest of the castle was built in bits an pieces, till the 16th century - it is very large!  The original pieces can be distinguished from the newer ones because they started using a different quarry, with yellow limestone.   

 The more recent addition look more like you would expect a traditional French castle to look like.  

 But it still has chapels and crypts dug in the limestone,

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 as well as the original “pigeonnier” where once over 1500 pigeons resided.  Their descendants still hang around…. 

The castle is still owned by the La Roche Foucault family, and they still live in part of it. 

Here are a few more pictures from the castle, including a replica that nicely shows the entire layout.

 

 

 The rest of the village is small but extremely charming, with its well preserved cobblestone alleys, its market place and its church.  Also, right on the Seine is a large walled orchard and vegetable garden which was wonderful to stroll through.

 

 After this busy morning, we had lunch on the deck (I hate to keep bragging about the weather like I can take any credit for it,  but it just amazing!), and floated slowly down a mirror like Seine, to Giverny. 

While I was typing this morning’s blog on our little balcony,  these 2 swans came begging for food - sadly, I had nothing for them….

 We docked in Vernon, just across the river from Giverny and its famous Monet Gardens.  We all know about the lily pad pond, and indeed, it was in full glory today (see picture on top of blog).

 

Just as Monet envisioned it, it was reflecting like a mirror and the many flowers were so beautiful!  As much as I liked the water lilys and Japanese gardens (which everyone likes…),  my favorite part was the much less known flower garden in front of Monet’s house.  I always say - jokingly- when people ask about my gardening style, that is is “exuberant”:  I like many colors, many flowers, and just a lot of everything!  Well, I'm proud to say, I share this with Monet - his gardens were not as much designed as explosive!  On as beautiful day as today, with so many flowers still in bloom, it was just magnificent!.

 

 The only down part was the crowd.  This is off season, so we were surprised at how crowded it was.  Literally, we just walked in a line with tons of people…..  

 we got a peak at Monet’s house - which was pretty and cheerful, with a lot of blues and yellows, as you’d expect. 

 

By that time, I was tired of crowds, so I walked back to Vernon, only about 3.2 miles away, on a very nice walking trail.  I stopped by the church where Monet married his second wife, and where he is buried (although I don’t know exactly where, I did not have the energy to look at every tombstone. 

The little village of Giverny is very charming and meticulously preserved.  Every house looks like it would fit right in a 16th century village.

The town of Vernon is lovely too - with a very beautiful church:  Normandy was bombed heavily during WWII and a lot of the stained glass windows were destroyed.  Only a few of the original ones remain, but I think they’ve done a great job with the new ones.

Tomorrow morning, we go to Rouen but don’t arrive till mid day.  Which is good because it means we get to sleep in….  We need that…. All this fun is exhausting…