FRANCE - HOLIDAY - GIVERNY

3/9/2010

On our second day we went to Monet's house and gardens at Giverny, the house has been restored to how it looked (or maybe just preserved) when Claude Monet lived there. The gardens were amazing and packed with hundreds and hundreds of different kinds of flowers.

Lucy, Ellen and I were definitely the youngest people there, as the only other visitors were about 3 bus loads of american, middle aged tourists. The high light - or low light depending on how you view it - was hearing one of them actually say "Bob I feel like a kid in a candy store!"... Lucy nearly puked.

Monets very pink house

View from the bedroom window

Sunflowers

Path ways though the flowers

Umbrella things to support the trees

This flower was bigger than my head

We walked around the garden admiring the flowers, we went through the underground tunnel and explored the famous water lily garden.

Lucy and Ellen by the ponds

Ellen with Claude Monets head.

FRANCE - HOLIDAY - VERSAILLES!!

2/9/2010

We stopped at Vernon for 2 nights because we wanted to visit Versailles and Giverny (which was 5 minutes away). The first day we decided to go to Versailles because its such a huge place we thought we may as well spend the day there, and then have a couple of hours at Giverny the day after and before heading off to La Mothe.

Best breakfast ever!

After our incredible breakfast (which was served in out rooms), we set of towards Paris and the Palace at Versailles. After and hours drive we got there and after a rather pesky dalliance with a parking metre we walked up the massive drive to the Palace. We approached Versaille from the garden first so our first impression of the place was of the huge landscaped gardens and masses of nearly naked statues with strategically placed robes/fig leaves that were spread all over the garden. As first impressions go it wasn't a bad one! From the top of the steps you look down the grande promenade to the two square lakes at the bottom, its an incredible view, I'm glad I'm not one of the gardeners who works there!

We then walked around the front of the Palace and queued up to go inside, the best part was that because we were under 26 we count as students and so got free entry, thus saving ourselves about 12 euros - woo! The palace is huge (as it should be the king of France did live there after all) and they are restoring all the gilt/gold fixtures on the top of the roofs and the gate. In all honesty I think it looks horrible, far too bright, but hey its not my palace so who am I to complain.

Lucy and Ellen outside the front gates

Versailles

The mirror gallery

The Hall of Battles

After we had walked all the way around the palace and visited the gift shop ( the best part!) and tempted Ellen away from the macaroons, we walked through the garden and down to the lakes at the bottom. Lucy had pretty sever sun stroke by this point so went to sit in the shade while Ellen and I decided to be adventurous and rented a rowing boat.

One of the lakes

Its fair to say I am a bad rower. I'd never rowed before, so we went round in circles for most of the time, and when we got stuck at the edge, had to have advice yelled at us by a friendly maybe american tourist. He did offer to row us back across the lake though.

After that we went home as Lucy was quite ill.

Me in a rowing boat

FRANCE - HOLIDAY - BONJOUR!!

1/9/2010

Flag on the ferry

Ellen, Lucy and I went on holiday to France this summer, the trip itself was in good but also pretty bad. It was a make or break holiday. Anyway, we left at 6.30am and set off for Dover, the drive was easy except for when we got to the Dartford bridge and we were queuing for absolutely ages! Going over the bridge was fun though, but I always get worried on long bridges/ in long tunnels that they will break and ill either drown or plummet into the water and then drown, but luckily it didn't happen that day. We got to Dover and hour and a half early so paid £10 to switch our tickets and caught an earlier ferry.

Goodbye England! - The white cliffs of Dover

Lucy and I were both really nervous about going on the ferry, the last time I went on a ferry was when I was 12, and I spent the whole 2 hour journey feeling like my stomach was trying to make a dash for the emergency exit - that exit being my mouth! Lucy has also had a similarly retch inducing experience. But all our worrying was for nothing, the crossing was smooth and was really sunny outside so we stood on the deck for a bit and got blown about by the wind.

Best illustrative picture of the wind

Calm seas

After we trundled of the ferry and onto dry land, I had more to worry about.. driving on the correct side of the road! This was really scary and Ellen and Lucy were really nice about my driving, not even yelling at me when we had a couple of near misses with other cars. Driving on - what to me is - the wrong side of the road, turned out to be pretty simple, just follow all the other drivers and everything seems to work out ok, the only exception to this rule being roundabouts.. then its a case of looking for a gap and praying you can execrate fast enough to join the mad scramble.

L'Hermitage, Vernon

After a peaceful 4 hour drive we arrived at Vernon, where we were staying for 2 nights on before we continued on to La Mothe Achard which was another 4 hours drive west. We stayed at a beautiful B&B called L'Hermitage, where we stayed in a suite and all felt very important. The room was huge and next morning we were told breakfast was served in our rooms, so we were all eagerly awaiting 9am and the breakfast bell.

The inside and outside of The Birds Suite

On The Roof ... 2!

There are many, many things about our new house that I hate. For example, the bathroom resembles some kind of underwater dungeon, the walls and floor are permanently wet, and because of this we now have mould growing anywhere it can get a foot hold. The ceiling, skirting boards, walls even the toilet roll holder has not been spared in the great mould invasion of autumn 2010. This problem has a solution: Ventilation and heat. Since I showered yesterday I made the game changing tactic of leaving the window open which dried the room out nicely - now we are leaving the window open all the time. So now although it feels like you've undertaken a trek to the antarctic when you need a wee at 3am, and its always a bit of a surprise when you can prize yourself off of the frozen toilet seat, but at least the floor isn't like a light bog and the toilet roll is dry rather than damp. Now hopefully when we scrape the mould from the walls it won't grow back.

Anyway, enough moaning, I won't complain about the rest of the house - although the living room carpet has to be seen to be believed - I'll now talk about my favourite part of the house, which is the roof. As I've mentioned before in a previous blog post we can get onto roof at the back of the house by climbing out of Sock's bedroom window, so on monday night the boys and I decided to venture on to roof and have an impromptu house warming party.

View from the roof

We took alcohol up with us - yes, I know this could have all ended in tears, but it didn't - and some snacks and had a couple of hours just sitting on the roof in the dark, till it got too cold and I went back inside. I also needed a wee, but unlike the boys I was too polite to piss off the roof and into the back 'garden' so had to go back and use a real toilet (how boring!).

Simon with the snacks and drinks

Socks

I'd never been up on the highest part of the roof before, mainly because I'm sensible (scared) but the boys were all experts as they'd been up before so stood sniggering while I tried to climb up without plummeting onto the concrete below. It felt really high up when we were on the roof - which i suppose it was - and we all had collective heart attacks when someone went too close to the edge - that person was never me, I was just imagining myself falling over the edge so I stayed in the middle.

Peeg and I on the roof

We stayed on the roof for a couple of hours, just drinking and talking, imagining what we would say to the police , if for some reason they turned up and demanded us to get down, then Si, Peeg and Sock's got all interested in the sky and pretended to be talking knowledgable about the plow etc ... I'm pretty sure non of them knew what they were talking about.

Next day I found lucozade bottles and beer cans scattered on the street below where the wind had blown them off the roof as we had been too lazy to take them down with us. Si also had to go back on the roof in the morning to retrieve his wallet.

Amateur star gazing