Off in my little Fiat 500 electric car hired from Hertz, to Giverny, to view Monet’s house and garden. Woo hoo! I forgot how close motor cycles drive past cars and wend in and out of traffic. My poor little car’s warning sensors kept going off like a frog in a sock!

Even though I got one of the earliest viewing tickets, there was still quite the queue to see his house and hard to take a pic in the garden without someone ‘photo bombing’ the shot. Bloody tourists! Ha.

Its hard to believe that Monet lived at this place for 43 yrs (1883-1926). With a passion for gardening as well as for colours, he designed the flower and water gardens as true works of art. Painting a bonus :).

LOVED his yellow kitchen in particular. The garden took an hour’s walk including the water lily pond. And I managed to launch the drone after leaving the house and get an aerial view of the design. Fabulous! The BESTEST of mornings.

My macro photography skills were challenged in capturing this little blue/green dragonfly in Monet’s garden.

Next, off to La Roche-Guyon, one of France’s ‘beaux villages’, located on the Seine River, with architecture and landscape influenced by Normandy and Ile-de-France regions. The imposing castle has been extensively remodelled over the centuries, from the corner turrets of the Middle Ages to the pavilions and terraces of the Renaissance era. Frequented by the kings of France and the intellectuals of the Enlightenment; owned by the La Rochefoucauld family since 1659; the castle was in 1944, invaded by German troops of Marshal Rommel who tried to negotiate peace there with the allies….

Drove through Saint-Martin-La-Garenne, a village that depended on the abbey from the 11thC; then was a ‘lordship’ attached to the lord of La Roche-Guyon, before being established as a commune during the Revolution.