Je parle français.....

Friday we pulled into Le Havre, France. Le Havre is a small shipping city in upper Normandy, about 2 hours from Paris. For this stop, I signed up for a tour to Giverny and Rouen.

This day started out a little crazy. All the guests met in the theater like normal, waiting to be escorted to the buses. But, we were informed there was a strike going on outside, and we should return in an hour. Neeko, Robert, Maude and I went to get coffee and wait. Neeko said strikes are so common in Europe; so I need to be aware and careful when I go to Paris plan that into travel time, especially on trains.

We were able to get off an hour later, and there were only nine people on mine! A private tour! I met my guide, Oliver (pronounced like “Uleverr” LOL) and he said we were two hours behind schedule so we weren’t going to Rouen. After we took off, one lady came over and asked if I was a representative for Royal. (UH OH, I thought, here we go….) Since I wear a tour escort badge, there was no getting out of it. So I said yes, and she began to tell me she was very upset that we weren’t going to the second city.

It was completely understandable; the guests paid $170 and now they were only getting half the tour. I assured her I would talk it over with the guide. I was very nervous but I politely asked him if he could explain the situation to me so I was clear about the plan. I asked why we couldn’t adjust the timing to fit it all in and at first he was resistant. He told me we couldn’t skip lunch at the restaurant because we had reservations there…? Even though the guests said they would rather not have a long sit down lunch if it means missing the other half of the tour.

He then told me it was about time because Giverny is 2 hours from Le Havre and then the drive back; and it is illegal for the bus driver to be in the port after 7:30, so we had to be back on time or he would lose his license. The lady said, “Then cut out all the free time/ shopping time,” because he said instead of going to Rouen we would extend lunchtime and have several hours to kill in Giverny.

Finally, he called into his supervisor and surprise- we could do it. The whole thing was a little sketch so I’m happy I pushed him to go. And for the rest of the tour, the guests repeatedly came to me and thanked me. I felt like a hero, saving the day :)


So after dealing with that mess, I was able to relax and enjoy the tour. We drove through France, and listened to Oliver’s information. We learned that Normandy is split into two sections, upper and lower, by a natural boulder. There is a project in progress working on unifying the two. We passed mistletoe trees and he said like in the states, it’s a tradition here to kiss under mistletoe, but on New Years rather than Christmas. I learned that depending on the region, Europe kisses hello and goodbye. In Normandy, it’s two kisses.

Normandy is beautiful country land; brilliant colors that attracted landscape artists throughout time. Upper Normandy is famous for it’s candles and cheese, or “cheese-ees” as he kept saying. LOL SO CUTE! Also, the apple cider is very popular. They use the aged cider for desert and the young for cooking.
Our first stop on this tour was at a restaurant tucked away in the forest. It had a large watermill, or Moulin, and an amazing view of France’s hills.

We dined on a three-course meal and wine. The salad had noodles in it and I ate several pieces of the delicious bread and homemade cheese. The lady next to me was making me a little nervous though, because she said they don’t pasteurize their dairy products here and he brother-in-law got tuberculosis from European dairy. WHAT!?!?!

The second course was mashed potatoes, a tomato, and a slice of meat. Everyone thought it was chicken or duck, but our guide told us later it was liver, BLAH. I enjoyed my potatoes ;) Our desert was a tasty apple cake, the perfect end to the French cuisine. After lunch, we boarded the bus again.
We were headed to Giverny, to tour Claude Monet’s house and gardens, including the famous lily pond and bridge.

While Monet was alive, his art was unique and at times, “scandalous”. We learned about two paintings in particular that were rejected by the council in his era. The first was his Olympia painting. It was only allowed to paint nude images of Roman Gods/ Goddess, and she was a prostitute. The traditional color of the subject was pink or blue tints, but Olympia’s skin was the real color. Monet also painted lunch in the forest of France, with two ladies and two men. Seems innocent enough, except the two ladies are almost completely naked. And in that time, you were supposed to be painting portraits, mythological, religious, or political subjects, but never a landscape. SCANDAL I TELL YOU!

Monet began sketching and painting at a young age, and worked with an art dealer to sell his collections. There was also another artist living in the same area at the time named Boudin. He was walking in town one day and saw Monet’s paintings in a window. He entered the store and asked the dealer to meet the artist. Boudin told Monet he was very talented and had a lot of potential. He advised that if Monet was serious, he needed to go to Paris to study and take on the art movement. Boudin was about thirty at the time and Monet, fifteen!

Monet became a student under Boudin’s authority and observed him in the country. Monet learned to study a subject, work in the studio, and then return to the subject several times to see how the light and seasons change rivers, trees, hills.
In the 1800’s, impressionist paintings were not successful in France. Most artists sold their work in the U.S. and Britain, where they were wanted. This is why most of Monet’s art is in New York and Chicago.

Monet grew older, and so did the world’s demand for his art. In his early stage, a painting of a bridge would sell for 25 euros. Several years later, one cathedral would be 300 euros. At the peak of his career, age 41, his paintings easily sold at 100,000 euros, EACH. Monet spent all of his money keeping his two gardens and house in picturesque condition.

Monet lost his wife and mother of his two kids to the cancer battle. He later hired Alice, wife to Ernest, to nanny the kids. Alice became his mistress and because-as Oliver said- “this is France” they all moved into a large house Monet bought. Five people all living together; the rumors and gossip certainly began to fly.

Soon, the war began. France was home to “the longest day ever”; when the world was forced to wait for either Hitler to successfully move and gain power, or to fail and the threat squashed. Monet was too old to fight in the war, but he began sending money from his art to the French Red Cross. At the time of his death, he donated his water lilies to France. Monet broke traditional canvas size and painted very long pieces, so he cut his art to transport them easier to the museum. The house and gardens are now open to the public but only two seasons out of the year because of course, fall and winter supplies no flowers.

The gardens were amazing. You could smell the fresh flowers and picture him sitting in one of his three studios, painting. It must have been paradise for him because the blend of the various colors were heavenly. I got a little creeped out being inside the house. The original Japanese art that he collected for inspiration were still hung up, and they had an old photograph of Monet in his house and all the furniture and decorations were still in the same place. That was so eerie to me; I got the shivers and had to leave.

We headed out of Giverny, towards Rouen. It is the capital of upper Normandy. We passed a church that had 26 towers, one for every letter in the alphabet. We stopped and gazed at the Cathedral Notre Dame, not the famous church from the Disney movie, but a beautiful one nonetheless. In fact, just across the street was Monet’s studio, where he lived and studied the church. Oliver told us a funny story about Monet and his art dealer while he was here.

Monet told the man he wanted to draw 28 pictures of the cathedral. Well, the dealer thought he was crazy, exclaiming nobody would be interested in an exhibit of the same subject! Of course, he was wrong and the collection sold out at the opening. Art collectors bought five to six of the pieces together, because he drew movement; sunrise, afternoon, and sunset, as well as the church standing in all the seasons.

We walked to another glorious church, with the highest iron cast spire in France. Inside, we looked at the pictures of the church during the horrible bombings of the war, and the efforts to restore it. The church is the traditional cross shape and one bomb went straight into a pillar that supported the rest of the building. Miraculously, the bomb didn’t explode and the people were able to retrieve and dispose of it. Had it gone off, the structure would have collapsed and nothing would be left. The church stands today with most of its original walls.

We looked at the tombs inside the cathedral, including King Richard the “Lion Heart”. The tomb contains his heart, and his other remains were buried in other important parts of France, a tradition for heroes. Outside, we walked beside the former Northern Parliament. Here, they found a Jewish school buried beneath the building. We were in the old Jewish quarter.

Walking along the streets, I swear I was getting fatter with each step. I could just eat everything they were displaying in the windows, because it all looked fantastic. Everyone thought we looked so funny, a big group following a numbered stick. The teens mocked being a tour guide, which was cool to hear humor of another language.

Next, we stopped at the old market square where there was a large church in honor of Saint Joan of Arc. There was a statue of her, and a garden surrounded by the wall where she was burnt at the stake. After she was captured, the Duke of Burgundy sold her to the King of England. They tried her for three months and declared her a heretic when she talked about God telling her she needed to crown the new King. She was 19. It was so weird being there, knowing that she was the same age I am today. Weird, and inspiring. In 1920, she was declared a saint because France needed a symbol of victory to prepare for the war. Oliver told us Mark Twain came here to read old documents of the history of France and wrote about her life and what she stood for.

Oliver gave us ten minutes of free time to run around to the souvenir shops, peek inside the church, or get something from the vendors. I grabbed a few postcards and then hit a sweet shop to buy a éclair, because my sister speaks so highly of them. It was chocolaty deliciousness! Next time, when I go to Paris, I think I will get a crepe! That’s next week so check back in!!!!! LOVE TO ALL!!!!!