Category: Europe Spring 2025

Friday morning in Giverny we had breakfast in our room. We had a baguette and croissants delivered fresh to our door. The OJ, yogurt, jams and butter were already in the fridge.

Around eleven we packed up and then went to see Monet’s grave in the cemetery.

We drove to Orly airport. On the way we stopped for one last picnic lunch. I will miss French bread and cheese!

At Orly we turned in the car, checked in, and then spent a few hours in the lounge waiting for our 6:30 flight. our flight was long but uneventful. We landed in San Francisco at about 9:30. Allison picked us up at the airport. We spent the night in Walnut Creek then drove home the next day.

It was a fantastic trip. We are tired but very glad to be home. Soon Duke will get to work planning the next trip.

Today was a wonderful day. We started out by going for a walk in the grounds at Chateau du Boulay-Morin.

As we were checking out the owner insisted we needed to have a cup of coffee. He told Duke “You can’t drive without coffee!” So we had coffee and chatted a bit. He told us that if he was American he would have voted for Trump. But now no! He said “Trump has made America a 0!”

After leaving the Chateau we went into Evreux, the town where we had dinner last night, and had croissants and another coffee at the Boulangerie.

We got to Giverny too early to check in so we strolled around a bit and bought some souvenirs. Then we had a picnic lunch in the garden of the Museum of Impressionism.

About 2:00 we checked in to Sous La Glycine. This B&B has one room in the basement. It’s perfect, cute and very comfortable. We are right on Rue Claude Monet just down the street from Monet’s house and garden.

Monet’s garden and house close at 6:00. A couple of weeks ago we bought advance tickets for 4:30. It was perfect. While we were there the crowds got smaller and smaller. And the gardens!! Oh my goodness they are wonderful! The colors, the light, the artistry. It was fantastic!

We took our time wandering through the gardens. It was surprising how many empty park benches we found. We had to check out each of them.

The things that surprised us about Giverny was how untoutisty it seemed, in spite of the massive crowds. And when we walked to dinner after everything was closed the streets were empty.

As I said at the beginning it was a practically perfect day. Tomorrow we return the car at the airport in Paris and fly home.

After we checked out of our hotel Wednesday morning we stowed our luggage in the car and then went to see the Honfleur church. It is wooden, and unlike any church I have seen in France. The guide book says that Honfleur was putting all their money into building defenses against the English so that when they needed a church they had their expert boat builders build the wooden church. It does look a bit like an upside down boat. It’s a very pretty church.

From Honfleur we drove east along the Seine to Jumièges Abbey. It was Normandy’s largest abbey. In 1791 after the French Revolution it was taken by the government and sold, and turned into a quarry. We wandered among the ruins and then napped under a tree.

On our way there we stopped for a picnic and then took the free ferry across the Seine. The river seemed to be flowing the wrong way! We learned that it is tidal for 105 km inland.

We spent the night at the Château du Boulay Morin south of Rouen. For dinner we went into nearby Evreux and had a wonderful meal at a Moroccan restaurant, La Baraka.

Our time in Normandy has been so much fun! We have gotten quite good at finding a local boulangerie and at buying our pain au chocolates and other treats. This morning the woman in the boulangerie suggest that we might prefer to buy our coffee at the bar next door because then we could eat our pastries and drink our coffee inside.

Back at our hotel I had a nice conversation in the parking lot with a British woman. She had her husband have a home in the south of France. They take the ferry over from Bournemouth and drive to their house. She was bemoaning how stupid Brexit is and how difficult it has made visiting their house. She complained about “Bloody Forage” and I complained about Idiot Trump!

From Crépon we drove east about 60 miles to Honfleur. We stopped at the Pegasus Bridge memorial where RAF glider pilots and their crews landed and captured the bridges over the Orne River and Canal early in the morning of June 6, 1944.

A little bit farther down the road we stopped for our picnic lunch.

Honfleur is a very old port town that still has a lot of its old buildings. We are staying on the third floor of a charming 100 year old house that was turned into a hotel. The hotel is called La Petite Follie. I’m sad to say our trip is almost over. But I must say that after carrying my bag up three flights of stairs to our room one thing I’m very glad about is that I won’t have to carry my suitcase up flights of stairs too many more times!

We had an excellent dinner at a nearby restaurant, Côté Resto. We started with shrimp, then had fish and octopus and ended with chocolate cake. I only took a picture of the shrimp

Today we explored the backroads around where we are staying. We are in the the British and Canadian sectors of the Normandy invasion.

Next we stopped at the Green Howard’s D-Day Memotial. It’s in Crépon near where we are staying. The Yorkshire Regiment (Green Howard’s) are the unit that captured Crépon on D-Day.

Just a couple of miles from Crépon are what’s left of a German Gun Battery. There were several big bumkers. According to the signs this kind of a battery would have been equipped with four 100 mm howitzers.

We also had fun taking pictures of the different crops we drove by and using the Apple plant identification feature to figure out what we were seeing.

Our next stop was a memorial to the squadron situated at the aerodrome that was built here after the invasion. The airfield was one of many built immediately after the invasion.

A bit farther away we stopped at the Benny-Sur-Mer Canadian War Cemetery.

Mid afternoon we had a picnic.

After eating we checked out the memorial across from where we are staying. It is about the Belgians who fought with the RAF.