Living the FRENCH LIFE
A Monet Day
We rocketed across France at 200+MPH on the fast train from Germany. The countryside flashed by, speeding past fields, farms, and stone villages each with a church steeple. Training faster than a speeding bullet I hoped I would be younger when we arrived.
A few hours and we were in Paris. The weather had changed gray and cool with a drizzle falling when Ruth’s cousin Terri met us. We got in her car and were off; she maneuvered us through traffic not confined to street lines. Cars appear on the right then the left, stop and go, as we worked our way across Paris.
In a while but we broke free of the city snarl and sped across a landscape lifted directly from a movie. Poppies, wild flowers, vast fields of grain, and stone villages dating back to the Normans in 1066. Who stacked all these stone walls? We continued on through villages with melodious French names until we reach the hamlet and 400 year old stone home where Terri and Kevin live.
I gasped “what scene are we in, there has to be a script?” The hamlet is centered around an old manor house and farm; the building and stone walls are intact. In France preservation is taken seriously and it shows; owners conform to the preservation codes. An owner can upgrade their home’s interior but outside must remain the same.
Terri and Kevin’s home is striking; the kitchen is perfect for a 400-year old French Country Home. Later Kevin took us down into the wine cellar, probably an ancient cellar used to cure hams or store vegetables. I thought to myself “maybe here we will begin the mystery; who did it?”
We toured the stone-walled streets and were carried back to ages past. How can we not take a photo? For us that was only the beginning of our Monet experience.
That changed the next day, a full Monet day. We were lucky the clouds had cleared; the light was beautiful. We passed the rock strewn fields where Kevin finds fossilized sea urchins, lots of them. There must have been a shallow sea here and a rapid extinction since the sea urchins are well preserved. As we passed a big jack rabbit jumped out and pheasants took wing.
Then down winding roads past time-warped villages across huge fields with a castle here and a manor there— sheer country elegance. Kevin in backseat to the driver, “slow down...” Arriving at our destination Giverny, I noticed the flowers.
Once inside the garden walls we joined all the other gawkers in awe of the landscape.
The pond, the water lilies, the iris, the peony flowers and a catalogue of blossoms.
But for me it is the poppies; how I love poppies.
We found our way into Monet’s home. A long narrow one-room thick two-story home, with signed Monets on the walls and the rooms furnished as when he was there.
But there in the windows just behind the lace drape were the works of art he painted. The window sills acting as frames for individual Monet Paintings. On through the house back to the garden…what a Monet Day!
