Monet's Garden at Giverny

Today we acted like normal tourists again and went on a tour: an all-day excursion to Claude Monet’s house and garden in Giverny in Normandy, 80 ks from Paris and then back towards Paris to the palace at Versailles. As with last Saturday, the weather was warm in the morning and it got very hot during the day. We boarded our bus just near the Louvre, on Rue Rivoli. The tour group consisted mainly of Aussies, Brazilians and Japanese, which reflects the three main nationalities in Paris at the moment, besides the French of course. Paris has long been the favourite tourist destination for the Japanese and the number of Aussies and Brazilians reflects the current strength of both those countries’ currencies. The two tour guides spoke English and Spanish - Brazilians are usually adept at Spanish even though their language is Portuguese. The two languages have similarities but are still quite different. Portuguese sounds like a mixture of Spanish and French. The main Portuguese word we learnt today was “obrigado”, which means thanks, very different to the Spanish gracias.

It was a buzz to be driven down the Champs Elysee and go around the huge and seemingly anarchic roundabout. It wasn’t long before we were in the green and pleasant French countryside, following the course of the Seine as it flows towards the English Channel or la Manche as the French call it.

Monet moved to Giverny at the age of 43 and lived there for 43 years. After years of abject poverty, he’d finally made enough money from his painting to buy the house and establish the magnificent garden, with its waterlilies, which he painted for the rest of his life.

If you love Monet’s work, you’ll adore this place. Even if you don’t care about art but love gardens, you’ll adore this place – it’s gorgeous. Everything is so lush and plentiful and there are flowers everywhere; it’d be very difficult to establish a garden like this in most of Australia, with our lack of water and our poor soils. The colours in the garden are just like Monet’s paintings. The house is wonderful, with all the original furniture and reproductions of his paintings all over the alls. The walls also feature many original Japanese woodcut prints from the Edo era, including some Utamaros and Hokusais. The waterlily garden is across the street – of course, there was no street when Monet lived there - and it’s gorgeous too, with many scenes that feature in some of Monet’s best paintings, including the green, arched bridges.