Chartres cathedral and Giverny: Trip to France 16/18

Chartres cathedral

After an evening of marveling at the Chartres cathedral exteriors, today was the day to see the interior stain glass windows. I had heard about Chartres blue in my high school French class and had always wanted to see it.

It was worth the visit. The blue was made in the 1200s and was a very expensive pigment of cobalt oxide. The process was a secret that has been lost to time. I also suspect that the vividness of the color is due to the relative thickness of the glass compared to normal windows, but I’m sure the experts have thought of that.

My favorite windows were in the West Nave, where a large round Last Judgement window is atop three windows that survived the fire that burned the original cathedral in 1020. That’s an amazingly long time ago.

The other round windows were both very pretty in the North and South. Are they all called rose windows if they’re round? Idk- there’s a lot I don’t know about stained glass windows. But I do think they’re gorgeous!

After the cathedral, I stopped by a boulangerie for a sandwich-for-the-road before going back to the hotel to check out at 11. It was super convenient to do something early in the morning and leave my bags behind. Even though it’s easy to leave the roll-aboard at a front desk, my large handbag can be quite heavy with everything I don’t think is smart to leave unlocked. So, leaving most of my things in the room makes me feel unencumbered!

Then, I was off to catch the train to Giverny! The connection was through Versailles Chantier, so I stopped at my hotel for the evening. I meant to just drop my bag, but my room was ready. This meant I could take the bare minimum with me to Giverny- hooray!

Giverny and Monet’s Gardens

I arrived at the Vernon station, planning on renting a bike to get to Giverny, the home and gardens of Claude Monet. But when I exited the station, I saw this cheesy little “train” that was a tourist mobile connecting to Giverny. Their website said it was closed for the season, but there it was! So for 10 euros, I bought a roundtrip ticket.

It was great! On the way to Giverny, it made a few drive-bys of Vernon attractions. There was an audio tour in English. I had started to download the app for “other languages” but then the audio started in English. Lol, I guess there’s not a lot of domestic tourism on that little train.

It’s funny what languages are spoken in tourist-trafficked areas. In Paris and Versailles, the train announcements were in French, English, and Spanish. But then between Versailles and Giverny, it was French, English, and German.

If you’re wondering whether a garden can be beautiful and worth going to in October, the answer is yes! Similar to other gardens on the trip, there are a surprising-to-me number of flowers in bloom. Yes, there are some yellow and red leaves, but that makes things even prettier!

I entered the garden and toured the Lily Pond first. This means I have to go the Orangerie when I get back to Paris! The pond was crowded, but not terribly so. There were some small groups that were from cruise ships, but I suspect it was the Viking/Cunard crowd.

After circling the pond a few times, I went through the underpass that divides the house/gardens from the pond. The house gardens are stunning. There are a lot of flowers and some produce, even though it’s mostly lined out in farmer-like rows. Visitors could walk down about half of them and the others were roped off.

I went into Monet’s house, which is pretty well preserved. My favorite places were his studio, his bedroom, and the kitchen. I was interested to see the lighting in his studio. I feel like I’ve seen better, but there was a decent South-facing window and it was a cloudy day. Besides which, I think Monet did ok.

I got a little lost in the garden. I could not figure out where the exit was. As a result, I had to hustle to catch the “train.” They were about to take off, but she stopped and let me on.

Cheese in Vernon

Then, I decided I wanted cheese for dinner. I went to the cutest cheese shop with a very nice shopkeeper. So, that was good! I wished I had thought through the idea a little bit more since the cheese adventure (yay!) meant that I had a long wait for the train (boo!).

Eventually, I made my way back to Versailles. Because it was the connecting station to both Chartres and Giverny, it made sense to stay here rather than Paris, even though Montparnasse is only 15 minutes away by train. One major advantage is that the lodging price is quite a bit lower!