Randy & Melisa Standly and Wayne & Kathy Graumann visit Claude Monet’s home and gardens in Giverny, France, September 2018

On Friday, we drove south from Rouen toward Chartres. It was a comical drive, as we wanted to take the country roads and ended up getting lost several times. However, because the country side was so interesting and beautiful and we were not on a strict time frame, we were happy with the experience. We did stop at a restaurant in one town and were served a wonderful meal. Oh, the French make eating such a pleasure! Kathy and Randy ordered lasagna and Melisa and I ordered calzones. We were in for a delightful surprise! The lasagna was not tomato sauce and meat, but cream sauce and scallops—lots of scallops. The calzone contained a French cheese with ham and for added texture in taste, eggs—baked inside to an easy over consistency. It was all so very tasty and Italian, done with French connotations. 

We spent time in Giverny, the favorite place for Claude Monet to paint his masterpieces of Impressionism. We walked past the lily pond, touched the weeping willows, walked the bridge and meandered in the stunning gardens filled with fragrant and heavily blooming flowers and could understand how he found his genius inspiration to paint so many canvases  here. His home was filled with his furniture. We were quite happy we had made a slight detour to visit this bucolic place. 

The Chartres Cathedral, a masterpiece of French Gothic Art, from 1194

The Chartres Cathedral’s stained glass windows live up to the hype. The largest collection of early medieval stained glass remaining were brilliant on this sunny cool day. In a cacophony of blues, greens, reds and golds, the windows told both Old Testament and New Testament Bible stories for the meditation of people because they could not read. One famous set of the windows tells the story of the temptation of Jesus by Satan—Satan is shown in red in the windows. A choir was singing vespers and their blended voices as they chanted the psalms reverberated through the high vaulted ceilings of the cathedral. Later, we enjoyed another great French meal in a brasserie and headed off to a great night’s sleep in our wonderful hotel. WEG 

Chartres, France, and its world famous cathedral