Monet's garden

The highlight and main purpose of Claire and I spending a weekend in Paris was this "must do" for gardeners. On Sunday we travelled by train from Paris to Vernon and then by bus to Giverny to visit Monet's house and garden, fulfilling one item on my long list of "must dos". The garden peaks in summer but seeing it in mid Spring was fabulous in its own right and arguably gave a better overall view of the structure as it was uninhibited by dense foliage. You could also gain a good sense of the promise of things to come with the fat buds and emerging fresh juvenile growth on vines, roses, perennials and deciduous trees and shrubs.

The slideshow below is a selection of the large number of photos taken.

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The house presides over the garden which is in two main sections - the geometrically laid out beds and the waterlilly pond. Our visit was punctuated by a shower of rain which meant we visited the waterlilly pond twice in two quite different light settings. On a macrp and micro level there is a seemingly endless set of visually compelling images.
The garden was not as extensive as I had imagined though it is intensely planted and would take a small army to keep in order - definitely not a low maintenance affair. I took over 200 photos and had a good time playing with close up shots. Many of the photos are for ideas in my own garden, particularly colour combinations of plants. The large number of visitors were easily absorbed along the many paths.
My favourite parts of the house were the kitchen and dining rooms - particularly for the colour schemes and as photography was not allowed I bought the postcards.
[I am experimenting with using Slideshare to embed a slideshow rather than link to an external web album. They each have their pros and cons and I have not decided yet which is generally better for my purposes .]

From London to Paris in 12 hours - a Eurostar saga

Claire and I set off from from London for Paris on Friday 21 April at 8pm expecting to arrive 2 hours later on the super fast Eurostar train. It turned out to be a comedy of errors with one technical failure after another. As a result we spent the whole night stranded on a broken down train in the middle of the French countryside, mostly in the dark and with little information provided. To make matters worse, people were allowed to smoke in the bar car which filtered through the other cars affecting myself and others with respiratory health issues. On the plus side, the staff were very helpful and responsive when alerted to medical issues. It was hard to know whether to laugh or cry as the situation went from bad to worse.

By 4am, in the absence of information updates, there was growing uncertainty and when the silhouetted figures of large darkly dressed men carring guns appeared in the doorways, it was not at all clear whether they were police coming to help or armed terrorists. Fortunately most passengers remained calm though frustrated and the gun-toting men were in fact police marshalling us to get off the train and walk along the track to the replacement train that had finally arrived from Paris. We then had a very slow journey to Paris towing the beleagured train behind us, arriving a little after 9am Paris time.

Upon arrival in Paris we were given some light refreshments (sweet sticky muffins and orange juice), taxi refund vouchers and an address for claiming a refund. Having lost a night's sleep, and therefore half our weekend we did not think that was enough and will be writing a letter.

Initial news report: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/kent/7356283.stm

Preliminary inquiry findings: (apparently the driver was to blame..... )https://outlook.education.tas.gov.au/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://uk.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUKL2112787920080421