Monet’s Gardens and House

Having not taken the opportunity last trip it was a must do this time to travel to Giverny and visit Claude Monet’s house where he lived from 1883 to 1926 and the gardens which gave Monet such inspiration for his paintings.

We don’t have “green fingers” but you can’t help but be taken with the gardens which even at this time of the year were a mass of colours and included a quite stunning lily pond which gave Monet the idea for his Grandes Decorations des Nympheas art work which he bequeathed to France - eight compositions make up the work.

A picture tells a thousand words so here goes:

Overlooking the gardens is Monet’s mansion which has been extensively renovated and has recaptured the atmosphere and charm of past times. It is so easy to imagine Monet sitting in his studio, perhaps with pipe in mouth, and putting on canvas what he was seeing out the window.

The visit has been one of the highlights of this holiday.

We left Giverny and drove above Paris to the east side to book into the hotel and return the car - sounds easy but if you have been to CDG airport it is anything but even with the benefit of GPS. After going round in circles we inadvertently got on the right side of the right road to pull into the hotel and after getting our bags into the room we got advice from the bellhop of the way to the car drop off - left out of the hotel, left at the second set of lights, left at the next corner, stay right on the next road, at the roundabout..... and lo and behold we finally got there.

We pulled up, a guy came out and took the mileage, said his colleague would return us to the hotel and went back inside to watch the FIBA semi-final which unfortunately for him France lost - there was no check of the car for any damage which is much as it has been every time we have returned a vehicle.

During the trip we drove 4356 kms at an average speed of 55kms/hr with a fuel economy of 5.4l/100kms.

We paid €183.70 for tolls and an average of €1.42 per litre of diesel.

Kms driven today: 123

East to..,

...... where the s/ is short for “sur” so we are now at Mézières on the Seine a community around 40kms west from central Paris.

Before we left Vandeuil we had a chat with Celine Fournaise the mistress of the vineyards we stayed at - they have 5 hectares of vines some as old as 30 years and has been in the Fournaise family for approximately 60 years.

They started picking the grapes today (by hand) and there will be 20 in the gang working for 9 days. By my calculations their crop will produce for them 37,500 bottles of champagne - we wish them well for their 2019 vintage!

The drive through to Mézières-Sur-Seine was on good motorway without much traffic until we were around 30kms east of Paris and then the density increased significantly so much so that it became stop/go for a 9 or so kilometre stretch, however once we cleared the core of Paris and were on the west side it thinned out again and remained comfortable driving to Mézières-Sur-Seine.

Our accommodation is in a gite on a residential property and has all that we require. It is 500m to a Carrefour supermarket so we walked down and got supplies for tonight’s meal there being no worthwhile restaurants locally.

An uneventful day but it has served the purpose of getting us close to Giverny so that we can spend a good amount of time there tomorrow before taking on the traffic again and getting across Paris to CDG airport where we sell the Peugeot back to Sodexa and then book into the Hotel.

A typical Mézières-Sur-Seine house 

Kms driven today: 208

The reputation is not deserved

The French have a reputation of being arrogant and antisocial when dealing with other nationalities particularly the English but our experience is that their reputation is not deserved.

I commented a few days ago regarding the greeting one gets when entering or leaving a shop or business but their friendly contact goes much further as exampled by:

Young lads riding their bikes, albeit on the footpath, wishing us good day as they rode passed

Group of young adults congregating near a carpark, a group that from a distance you would normally skirt, doing the same as we walked passed

Elderly lady standing outside her house this morning acknowledging us as we walked passed (occurred twice today)

Today, in a local restaurant which by this time was getting full, a gentleman entered through the door near we were seated and though he obviously knew most in the restaurant given his subsequent actions acknowledged us before speaking to others 

We go for a daily walk back home and you usually have to embarrass those you pass by saying good morning to even get a smile - not so here as the French usually have got their greeting away first!

We walked into Jonchery-sur-Vesle late this morning for lunch at the restaurant referenced above, starting off through the vineyards. Once there we again admired the village which is as well presented as any we have been to

A well kept property 

And another in contrast confirming it relies on agriculture to survive 

We returned to Vandeuil taking a road through the countryside and thoroughly enjoyed the scenery 

A paddock with recently sewn new winter crop

Spot the difference - first wooden home we can recall seeing in France 

Vandeuil in the top left corner 

Herd of Charolais beef cattle 

Château D’Irval

Lake on the Château’s property 

Getting ready for the grape harvest tomorrow 

Vandeuil church - we hear the bells every 30 minutes from 7am to 9pm

A map showing where the 7 Champagne producers in the village are

Later in the afternoon we drove to Lerclerc to get something for our evening meal and when we returned we went for a walk through the vineyards - the grapes though they appeared to us to be small will start to be picked tomorrow 

And from the vines at the top of the hillside there was a nice view of the village and also our accommodation 

Peugeot left side a third way down photo 

Tomorrow we move to Mézières-Sur-Seine a village slightly (40 odd kms) to the west of Paris for an overnight stay so that on Friday we don’t have far to travel to visit Monet’s Gardens at Giverny before later that day driving back to the east side of Paris to return the car and take up residence at a hotel at Charles de Gaulle airport (30kms NE from central Paris) for 3 nights which will allow us to take the train into Paris on Saturday and Sunday to have another look at that great city before flying to Singapore on Monday.

Kms driven today:7

Interesting wine 🍷 titbits

The video available here is taken from our accommodation at Vandeuil in the Champagne region and gives some appreciation of the magnitude of the industry here remembering that Vandeuil is around 35kms from Épernay which I think is regarded as the centre of the champagne universe and there are vineyards all the way from here to there.

Facts:

There are 80,000 acres of vineyards in the appellation 

Each acre produces approximately 5 ton of grapes (strictly controlled to be in the range 4-6 tons per acre)

Each ton produces approximately 750 bottles

Therefore the region produces approximately 300,000,000 bottles of champagne a season

The dates for picking are strictly controlled and picking starts here in Vandeuil on 12 Sep

A list of the days picking can start in each “village” can be seen here

The following was found on the web

The Champagne region of France has announced the start dates for the 2019 harvest, with villages commencing harvest gradually beginning this week and into next week. The start dates vary by each village and grape varietal, ensuring that every plot is picked at the optimal ripeness. Every year, all the grapes are handpicked—part of the Champagne appellation’s strict regulations and one of the key steps to producing the unique, high-quality sparkling wine that comes only from Champagne, France.

Only grapes from specific, delineated plots in the appellation can be used to produce Champagne. Located 90 miles northeast of Paris, the region covers fewer than 80,000 acres. From growing grapes to blending wines, the winemaking process is a carefully orchestrated system of adjustments that all adds up to make the wines of Champagne. The 2019 growing season was punctuated by climactic shocks, including record-breaking temperatures over the summer, underscoring the need for Champagne to develop innovative solutions to adapt to a changing climate. The entire region — from growers to houses to suppliers — understands the importance of working together to respond to the changes taking place in the world while maintaining its commitment to quality.

Today was a quieter day for us. Sam contacted us this morning and gave us a rundown on his weekend away with his family in the South Island celebrating his 40th and that made our day. We had lunch in the apartment before driving into Reims for the afternoon and early evening to take in more of what this city has to offer and also to finish off some shopping .

An early dinner in a restaurant we had booked was not without its challenges - they didn’t intend opening until an hour after our booking, but we resolved that and had a nice meal before driving home.

Having brought our Chromecast with us we have been able to watch some programmes on Netflix and over the past few nights we have been watching a series on Donald Trump’s rise to the Presidency which we will finish tonight (all through his life he has displayed a complete lack of class if the series portrays him correctly)

Kms driven today:37

It smells of money

Épernay is regarded as the Capital of Champagne and L’Avenue de Champagne is the focal point of the town because many of the major champagne producers have their “houses” in the avenue.

Producers such as:

Moët and Chandon

Mercier

Pol Roger

De Castellane

De Venoge

Boizel 

Collard-Picard

The avenue was developed both above and below ground solely to facilitate the production of champagne. Merchants settled in the avenue in the late 18th century and built large production buildings and then from the 19th century stately residences and they are now the visible aspects of the avenue.

What is not seen however, unless one visits one of the “caves” is what has been created underground - over 110kms of chalk cellars storing over 200,000,000 (200 million) bottles of champagne creating an underground city and which some say makes the avenue the most valuable street in the world.

As for the town itself, you smell the wealth in the avenue but this hasn’t been shared with the rest of the town


Interestingly in Reims, around 25kms from Épernay, there are over 250kms of underground cellars containing around the same number of bottles for producers such as:

Taittinger 

Veuve-Clicquot 

Mumm

Pommery 

Kms driven today: 93

A day of reflection!

Le Quesnoy turned out to be further away than Google Maps had indicated but it was worth it.

It is a “fortified” city captured by the Germans in World War I and which was liberated by NZ soldiers on 4 November 1918 ending 4 years of occupation.

At the time there was a garrison of 1000 German soldiers in the city and they were ordered to withstand any attack. The Germans were given three opportunities to surrender and after the third refusal the Kiwis moved on the city gaining entry by climbing a ladder at the place where a monument to them now stands. Man after man climbed the ladder and after a street fight the Germans surrendered, the residents grateful that the town suffered no significant damage in the liberation.

As a consequence Le Quesnoy remains grateful to NZ and there are numerous reflections of that in the town.

An example of the fortification 

The monument to the NZers where they scaled the wall

Just outside the town is s very well maintained cemetery containing among others 50 graves of our men...
..one of whom bore the surname of Sherry’s family and whether he is related will be determined once we get home.
With some pride we “signed” the visitors book before returning back to Vandeuil 
Kms driven today; 405

IKEA

It took us until Reims to go into an IKEA store (didn’t see one in Scandinavia) and only then because we needed to replace a €2 item broken in the night.

The store was 2 floors and was set out so that you had to walk through all of it to get to the checkout. It included both a restaurant and also a cafe and by the time we got out the door we had walked 1.2kms - if a store like this is set up by IKEA when they enter the NZ market it would blow NZers away.

The centre also included other “mega” stores covering the whole range so it was a one stop environment albeit we did not notice a food hypermarket.

On the way back to Vandeuil we stopped off at Leclerc and gave the car a drink and did some grocery shopping (smart as the shops are closed the better part of tomorrow) and we then travelled on to Fismes a village around 11km up/down the road.

Apart from a very nice Hotel de Ville and a War Memorial there was not much to see there so we headed back to our nest among the vineyards.

The village we went to for dinner last night, Hermonville, also had a nice building which housed the Mairie. This is, or seems to be, a very prestigious position in a French community as we are told nothing happens without the express permission of the Mairie (Mayor)For such a small village (population 1480 in 2016) the restaurant provided fine dining and was a popular establishment given how busy it was. Tonight we have a booking for dinner at a restaurant in another village Coulonges-Cohan (pop. 436 in 2016) around 18 kms away.

Driving through this part of France is very pleasant with the rolling hills, ploughed fields, crop paddocks and vineyards and well maintained roads.

This morning I listened to the Warriors game on the radio and fellow Warriors supporter Lance, who I referenced in an early post, was rewarded this weekend by the team for his efforts in traveling to Canberra to watch them play!

Tomorrow weather permitting we intend to drive to Le Quesnoy some 100+kms north east of here and close to the Belgium border - this town we understand has has a monument to NZ soldiers who liberated the city in WW1.

Kms driven today:64