We also made time to stop at another garden, the Jardin des Plantes, created in 1635 at the instigation of Heroard, Louis XIII’s first doctor and Guy de la Brosse, his regular doctor, the Royal Garden of medicinal plants became the Botanical Garden after the Revolution. Now here I saw two of the most unique glasshouses as well as a little rose garden with quite the startling sculpture that I have included with my pictures. This was part of the National Museum of Natural History so you will see many different buildings here..all very impressive!

Our next day, after breakfast, our coach was waiting for us and we left for Claude Monet’s house in Giverny. I was not prepared for the beauty of these gardens…they were truly inspiring and after a tour of the gardens we could all go through the house and upstairs to his bedroom and look out the very same windows that he did, where he could see and reflect on the colours themselves.

"If, I can someday see M. Claude Monet's garden, I feel sure that I shall see something that is not so much a garden of flowers as of colours and tones, less an old-fashioned flower garden than a colour garden, so to speak, one that achieves an effect not entirely nature's, because it was planted so that only the flowers with matching colours will bloom at the same time, harmonized in an infinite stretch of blue or pink."

After completion of large-scale restoration work, Claude Monet's property in Giverny, left by his son to the Académie des Beaux-Arts in 1966, has become the Claude Monet Foundation, inaugurated in 1980.

The house, with its pink roughcast façade, where the leader of the Impressionist School lived from 1883 to 1926, once again has the colourful decor and intimate charm of former times. The precious collection of Japanese engravings is displayed in several rooms, as the master of Giverny himself had chosen to. The huge Nympheas studio, a stone's throw from the house, has also been restored. It houses the Foundation's Shop.

The gardens have been replanted as they once were and offer for the admiration of visitors the "painting from nature" which Claude Monet's contemporaries considered one of his masterpieces.

The rectangular Clos Normand, with archways of climbing plants entwined around brilliantly coloured shrubs, lies before the house and studios, offering from Spring to Autumn the palette of varying colours of the painter-gardener who was "ecstatic about flowers".

Lastly, the Water Garden, formed by a tributary of the Epte, lies further away, shaded by weeping willows. With its famous Japanese Bridge, its wisterias, azaleas and its pond, it has once more become that setting of sky and water which inspired the pictorial universe of the water lilies.

After visiting the gift shop we were lead out the back way which just happens to be the way to the Hotel Baudy and further on the church where Monet is buried.

This lane was so beautiful, on either side profusions of iris and roses all the way, I would think for a good two to three blocks. There are little shops and places to sit and drink and each one has it’s own garden brimming with plants. Along this way there is a garden that Hilda just had to have us visit…it belonged to the Musee d/Art Americain Giverny presenting the unique collection of the Terra Foundation for the Arts, in a setting that calls to mind the Impressionists landscapes painted by American artists in France during the time of Claude Monet. The gardens were ‘rooms’ each containing different types of plants and was really a surprise to see.

Hotel Baudy Rose Garden was a treat…although on a rather steep slope it was loaded with roses of all kinds. The restaurant was full so we chose to sit outside and enjoy a cup of tea before walking back to our coach and the hotel.

The former Hotel Baudy housed the first painters - mainly Americans - who came to work in Giverny. The garden presents a collection of ancient perfumed rose bushes planted in the shade of trees along the slope of the hill. The hotel has kept the decoration of the dining room where the residents used to meet, and also the studio where they liked to work.

When Claude Monet came to Giverny, the hotel Baudy didn't exist as such. The small "epicerie - buvette" owned by Angelina and Gaston Baudy offered nothing but a simple meal. There were no rooms available to welcome travellers - in any case, who would want to sleep in this little village?

In the spring of 1886, all this changed. The American painter William Metcalf arrived at Vernon station and came to Giverny by way of a little train that, at the time, passed through all the villages from Vernon to Gisors. The norman countryside offered the young artist a magnificent spectacle of blossoming apple orchards and rolling hills. Metcalf regretted that he had left his paints behind....