French Bliss

The old watermill in Vernon, Normandy

is what I enjoyed earlier this month when I went for a short holiday to Normandy, France. It's a 6 hours drive from where I live so not too bad. My main reason for going was, of course, to experience Monet's garden in May and it did not disappoint as you can gather from my previous post.
The weather was lovely so that made the holiday even more enjoyable. Monet's garden was not the only garden I saw when I was there. Just a few hundred meters from Monet's garden is the American Art Museum that comes with its own lovely garden and, you haven't heard the best bit yet, it's free!
The road from the American Art Museum to Monet's garden flanked with zillions of Irises
The garden of the American Art Museum
Hmmmm, what does this Grand Allee remind me of? Not the foggiest, you?
It is not the biggest of gardens but you can spend a very pleasant half hour there before or after you've visited Monet's garden. And the museum itself is worth a visit too. I went to see the exposition Portrait of a Lady. and very pretty Ladies they all were too.
Before I went to Monet's garden I had a nice cup of coffee and a scrumptious fruit tart at the Terra Cafe of the Museum. After my visit to Monet I returned to the Terra Cafe to have an excellent lunch outside on the terrace underneath a canopy of tree branches, overlooking the garden. Simply Bliss!
Close to Giverny you find the small town of Vernon with some lovely architecture but appallingly bad food. I had the worst dinner ever there although the wine was excellent. Yes, the French do bad food too. Yuck!
Some beautiful old houses dating back to the Middle Ages, Vernon
Ancient Donjon, Vernon
Gothic church with the gargoyles to prove it

All that sightseeing makes a person hungry so off we went to a lovely old watermill, Le Moulin de Fourges, to have dinner.
We'd booked a table at 8 and when we arrived it was still warm enough to have our aperitifs outside in the garden.
Cheers!

Later on, when it got a bit nippy, we went inside to have our dinner.
One of the charms of dining in an old building is its lovely atmosphere; it was simply riddled with old beams, quaint little windows and whathaveyou.
There also was a lovely view of the surrounding countryside. But enough of quaint sloping floors, adorable little mullioned windows and forehead bumping low beams, let us progress to the more important stuff : the food!
Starter
Main course
Just deserts ;-)
Feast your eyes on this, gentle reader. What a pity that it can only be a feast for your eyes.With it I drank a half bottle of an amusing red wine, tres amusant in fact, not to mention tasty.

I was in Normandy for only a few days but I made the most of it. Even the drive to and from Normandy was very pleasant as we drove through gently rolling hills and these gorgeous fields of golden Bliss under a deep blue sky. You could smell the flowers long before you could see them, a kind of warm wild honey, very enjoyable.
copyright 2008 Y.E.W. Heuzen

The gardener does not love to talk (...)
And never seems to want to play, (...)
O how much wiser would you be
To play at Indian wars with me!
Robert Louis Stevenson, A Child's Garden of Verses