Today was a long but very enjoyable.  My alarm was set for 7:00 and I was out of the apartment by 7:30, having organized everything last night.  It is two metro rides to the St. Lazare station, which looks much as it did in when Monet painted it in 1877.  It is the second busiest railway statin in Europe, after the Gare du Nord, and I found my way!

I just made it onto the train in time.  Turns out my watch was more than ten minutes slow!  Soon I was in Vernon, found the bus to Giverny and a short ride later, arrived at Givernry.

It is a magical place, with a profusion of flowers, all shapes, colours and textures.  Monet didn’t like an organized or constrained garden.  He planted according to their colours, and let them grow as they wished.  As it is late in the season everything is mature and many of the plants towered several feet over my head!  It is quite the sight.  The paths have all but disappeared, even the big wide path under the arched rose arbours is almost completely covered in Nasturtiums.  The dahlias are numerous and exquisite, so many different colours and shapes of petals.

I’m afraid my pictures don’t do it justice.  I am having computer problems tonight, very slow connection and then a couple times things just disappeared, rather frustrating.

The garden is very different in each of the seasons so it would be lovely to see it in the Spring…   If you go to Giverny.org there is lots of information about the garden and the types of flowers shrubs and trees planted there.

The water lilies were in bloom and they slowly opened as the sun climbed higher in the sky.

Here is the view from the famous Japanese Bridge we see in so many of Monet’s paintings.

The house is so much bigger than I expected, it is 40 meters long but only 5 meters wide!  There was no access to his two large studios on the property. Too bad, and I just realized when I was looking at the site that I mentioned that I somehow missed seeing the studio that was in the house!  I can’t believe I did that!  There was so much to look at. Oh well, I guess I will have to go back one day so I can check it out.  Although there were line ups most of the day, I managed to visit the house at a time I could just walk right in.

I tried a little watercolour sketch, but it wasn’t the most successful.  I usually work in pastels when using colour so this was a bit of a challenge.

Made it home but witnessed a lot of yelling by a young woman on the escalator at the St. Lazare station. There were a lot of people around and she seemed to be arguing with at least one man.  I was going down as she was going up, but people looked upset, not sure what it was about.  In any case, I was glad to get home and into my apartment with no problems.

I just got an email that someone didn’t get the last two days posts.  No idea if this just happened to her or to anyone else?  You can check at trudymason.com.  I have been posting every day and hope to continue to do so.