The most famous garden in Normandy

13 Wednesday Jun 2012

Posted by chaumierelesiris in Culture, France, Normandy, Things to do, Travel

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Art, Flowers, Gardens, Giverny, Monet, Normandy, paintings

Giverny–where Claude Monet lived and painted for 43 years–is certainly the most famous garden in Normandy, perhaps in all of Europe or even the world. It was here that he created the water garden with its iconic Japanese bridge that he painted over and over and which hangs, in reproduction, on a million institutional walls.

A visit to Giverny, however, doesn’t start with the lily pond, but with the rather fabulous–and previously unknown to me–Clos Normand, his magnificent wildflower garden.

The garden, which fronts his house, is laid out in corridors of colour: one purple, one yellow, one pink. Flowers and rose arches rise on either side. Even though it’s crowded – on a midweek afternoon during school season we waited 20 minutes for our tickets – you can lose yourself wandering through the fragrant lanes.

We visited in early June, and the flower garden was bursting with colour, all poppies and peonies and hollyhocks and irises.

All those poppies recall the Monet print that hung in my childhood nursery, the one of a girl and her mother walking through a poppy field, the girl wearing a boater not unlike my school uniform hat, and the mother wearing a scarf and carrying a parasol.

The gardeners were busy at work, tending to all that wildness.

If the flower garden offered more than I expected, then the water garden was slightly underwhelming. The two gardens are intersected by a busy road, and there is noise from the traffic on the road. And to be fair the day was grey, the light flat. The pond is really very small, and not as lovely as it is painted in oil and hanging on the walls of the world’s great museums. It reminded me of visiting the most famous gardens in Japan. Like this one they were perfect on a small scale, and elbow to elbow as crowds of tourists sought just the right picture for their holiday blog.

Monet’s house is worth a look. It has been renovated recently, and rooms on both floors are open for viewing. The bedroom overlooks the gardens. The painter’s bed is curiously small for two people, and the ensuite bathroom is luxurious. What is known as the yellow kitchen is in fact a dining room with a large table, with a smart blue kitchen beyond it. It seems that the Monet family enjoyed their entertaining–and who wouldn’t, in such a spot?

The children brought along The Magical Garden of Claude Monet, which takes a child and a dog on a tour of house and gardens. They enjoyed discovering the places shown in the book – especially Monet’s boat.

There are a number of official and unofficial websites dedicated to Giverny, of which we found the best for visitor information to be the Claude Monet Foundation website.

Town Mouse, Country Mouse

12 Saturday May 2012

Posted by chaumierelesiris in Culture, Travel

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Art, Bow, dog, Graffiti, Lee Navigation, London, Olympic Park, Olympic Stadium, Olympics, restaurant

This is a blog about living and travelling in rural Normandy and I try to stay fairly close to the subject. I’ve gone off-piste from time to time. I was star-struck by an encounter with Blur’s Alex James, and I enthused about a friend’s chalet in Vaujany. Today I’m going to stray again. If this blog is all about rural life, I’m going to write about its opposite.

Last weekend we spent a day wandering around East London – a helter skelter patchwork of old industry and new development, a resolutely urban space crawling with builders and testers and security guards and snapping tourists like me as it enters the last weeks before the London Olympics. (For a neat travel account of things to do in East London, see the New York Times’ 36 Hours in East London).

We walked along the Lee Navigation, a system of canals built out of from the River Lea that once served industry, and are now the heart-center of Olympic development. This provided some excellent views of the main Olympic stadium, where sound checks were underway all afternoon.

Here is one of the entrances to the Olympic park. You can see old industrial buildings next to a secured gate into the Park. I love the graffiti under the canal bridge: IMAGINE WAKING TOMORROW AND ALL MUSIC HAS DISAPPEARED. Our dancing-singing-violin-playing daughters tried to imagine what that would be like.

It’s been decades since the canals have carried working barges, but there are houseboats all along the sides. You might think a houseboat is a romantic, bohemian way to live cost-effectively in London–that’s not always the case. Even if the houseboat is affordable, mooring prices and terms vary widely. Behind the houseboats here, you can see the kind of smart apartments that have appeared all over this once industrial area.

Someone has set up these miniature sculptures ‘watching’ the construction of the Olympic Park from across the Lee Navigation. (Is this a good moment to mention that there is a French connection to the Olympics. It was a Frenchman, Pierre de Coubertin, who in 1894 proposed in a speech at the Sorbonne the idea of revival of the Games and establishment of the International Olympic Committee.)

For lunch we made our way into Bow, where Roach Road was unexpectedly buzzing with Bugaboos and LandRovers–surely day visitors from Islington and Dulwich trying to snatch a bit of artistic urban cool just like us? Look at the Olympic Stadium looming behind.

With children and dog in tow, we were delighted to discover that the cafe at Stour Space is energetically child and dog friendly. This is certainly not the case in much of London–I have yet to find a dog-friendly cafe in Fulham. The excellent brunch menu included pea soup and bacon sandwiches.

Stour Space is hosting a retrospective of works by local printmaker James Brown. This version of a William Morris quotation, which can be bought at the V&A, particular spoke to us:

Since we’re talking opposites today, I had to take note of the requisite anti-Olympics graffiti just along the street.

There’s much beauty in the contrasts here. Of course there is: it’s the differences in life, after all, that provide richness and texture. The town mouse and the country mouse need each other, and make each other, in their contrast, more beautiful.

Le Havre in Rain and Sun

07 Monday May 2012

Posted by chaumierelesiris in Culture, Food, France, Normandy, Things to do, Travel

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architecture, Art, Auguste Perret, Easter bells, Eglise Saint-Joseph du Havre, Food, Le Havre, Market, Musée Malraux, Oscar Neimeyer volcano, Renoir, sardines

Le Havre probably isn’t top of your list of things to do in Normandy. It certainly wasn’t top of mine–even though it’s on the Unesco World Heritage list. For me, Le Havre has always been a ferry port on the way to somewhere nicer, famous for having been bombed to bits by both sides during World War II.

But my ever adventurous husband kept encouraging me to go. He wanted to know where all the boats that pass by the end of our garden were coming from; and he was interested in seeing the largest container port, and second busiest overall port, in France. So we left behind the bucolic blossomy Easter week countryside and drove off in search of urban grit.

We arrived in a shower of rain, found parking, and ran into the nearest shelter, a large concrete doorway. I stumbled in, looked up, and then had one of those blinking-into-the-gloom moments that you get in the great medieval cathedrals like Notre Dame, Salisbury or Reims. Except here I was in a dramatic modernist space, the Eglise Saint-Joseph du Havre, made entirely from reinforced concrete. Built in the 1950s, the cathedral was designed by Auguste Perret, the architect who led the reconstruction of Le Havre after the war. It’s quite hard to describe the effect of stepping into this cathedral, and pictures don’t do it justice. The concrete is hard and cold and ugly, and yet the overall effect is uplifting and awe-inspiring. If you do one thing in Le Havre, go there.

The rain stopped, the sun came out (every day in Normandy contains about 7 days of weather in other places) and we headed towards the port, stopping along the way at the covered market for sandwiches and where we admired the traditional Easter bells and other chocolate on display.

Dotted around the port are some interesting sculptures, and this unusual Oscar Neimeyer designed volcano, which houses a cultural centre.

Oscar Niemeyer Volcano in the rain, Le Havre

Then on to the Musée Malraux, known as MuMa, and its excellent collection of impressionist art in another modernist space that’s more attractive inside than out.

Musee des Beaux-Arts Andre Malraux Le Havre

There are works by Boudin, Monet, Dufy, and many of the impressionists; I particularly liked the several portraits by Renoir, as well as the way the museum windows let the changing Normandy light right inside.

Along the seafront from the museum, boats were being taken out of dry dock by men with a small crane. We walked out along the long pier. Retired couples out for a stroll greeted us warmly, and a class of small student sailboats bobbed about at the end of the pier. Looking back was a rather lovely view of the port, smart new apartments, and the Perret cathedral tower.

Le Havre harbour and Auguste Perret tower

Do look out for the seafront shop, La Belle-Iloise, which has walls and walls of these brightly coloured tins of sardines. What wonderful gifts.

Le Havre seems to me something like a beautiful easter egg hidden in an old bag, full of delightful surprises that it’s worth taking the time to savour.

Spring in Upper Normandy

18 Wednesday Apr 2012

Posted by chaumierelesiris in Les Iris, Normandy, Travel

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chaumiere, Easter, Flowers, Le Havre, Normandy, photography, restaurant, Scarecrows, Spring, Travel, Vieux-Port

Normandy is just about my favourite place in the spring. Get there at the right moment, and the countryside is trimmed with white apple blossom, like lace on a Victorian bride. The sky is big and the light changeable and nuanced. No wonder the impressionists discovered light here.

I was lucky enough to spend last week in Upper Normandy. Here are some of my pictures.

Arboretum in bloom, Château d’Harcourt

Evening, Auberge du Vieux Logis, Conteville

Spring garden overlooking the Seine at Les Iris

Easter bells, bunnies, chickens, at the central market in Le Havre

Scarecrows, near Harcourt

Le Havre from the pier

Sunset, Vieux-Port

Spring flowers and herb garden, Les Iris

Vieux-Port and the Seine

Yellow field near Sainte-Opportune-la-Mare

If You Go Up To The Woods Today

06 Friday Apr 2012

Posted by chaumierelesiris in Normandy, Things to do, Travel

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Aizier, Archeology, France, History, Leper Colony, Leprosy, Romanesque, Walking

This is a post about a walk in the woods to a mysterious place not far from our cottage. From the village and from nearby Azier, there are signs pointing to the Chapelle Saint-Thomas, up in the hills. Follow the signs and you will find yourself climbing this wooded road.

Chapelle Saint-Thomas isn’t listed in the guidebooks yet. It’s been around since the 1200s, and was inhabited until the eighteenth century. Over the last decade, the site has been the subject of an archeological excavation to expose the foundations and history of the Leproserie de Saint-Thomas d’Aizier.

How did medieval lepers live? In Biblical society (it’s Holy Week, I’ve been thinking about the gospels), leprosy was a symbol of sin, and lepers were stigmatised and lived on the margins of civilisation. That’s why it’s a story worth telling when Jesus engages with lepers. Who would do that? You can’t imagine that wherever the Biblical or medieval lepers ended up living was much of a place.

But here, overlooking a curve in the Seine (which is visible through the leafless trees in winter), is the loveliest place, all silvery birches and green velvet moss. There is an excellent set of display boards marking out the various areas of the settlement – the living and working areas, the Romanesque chapel, the cemetery. Not a slum at all, it seems, but rather a working, monastic-type community and hospital.

People still come to think and pray in this peaceful, verdant spot. Lovers knot branches which grow up in these strange curved shapes as the years go on.

From Vieux-Port to Aizier

31 Saturday Mar 2012

Posted by chaumierelesiris in France, Normandy, Things to do, Travel

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Aizier, national park, Normandy, Romanesque, Seine, Travel, Walking

Walking is one of our great joys in Normandy. In London, the city buzzes around us all the time. Cars speed up and down our street of terraced Victorian houses, while overhead planes cruise towards Heathrow from dawn into the night. We walk in the city too, but mainly to get somewhere, and in a hurry. It’s a luxury to set off on foot without any particular agenda.

A national park footpath starts just beyond the end of the garden and runs east for a few kilometers along the Seine to Aizier. It’s a great walk for the children, flat, and lined with blackberry bushes, and with neat stepping stones across a vigorous stream. The path ends at a large picnic ground, from where you can turn right into the attractive village of Aizier.

Aizier’s Romanesque church dates from the 11th century. Even older is a mysterious stone with a large round hole in it. Discovered in the 1870s, it is thought to be 4000 years old, and marked the position of a neolithic burial ground.

Around the church there is a short historical walk with archived photographs of the village.

Look at all those people – the policeman, the deliveryman, the baker, the schoolchildren – squinting smartly into the sun in front of the general store. You’d be hard pressed to round up anyone in sleepy Aizier today.

What was once the petrol station is now smartened up and reborn as the swanky La Bonne Auberge

From here, return to Vieux-Port either back along the river or along the road. Better, extend the walk by taking the small road up the hill towards the recently excavated Chapelle Saint-Thomas.

Boudin in Normandy

28 Saturday Jan 2012

Posted by chaumierelesiris in Culture, Normandy, Things to do, Travel

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Art, Boudin, Honfleur, Le Havre, Normandy, Normandy art museums, paintings, Trouville

Do make time for the Musée Eugène Boudin if you find yourself, as we recently did, in Honfleur on a rainy winter’s day. Boudin (1824-1898), a native of Normandy, is known for his paintings of the outdoors, and was a great influence on Monet and the Impressionists.

The museum is spacious and the collection not too large; allow one to two hours. The collection includes work by pre-Impressionist and contemporary Norman artists, as well as displays of traditional Norman costumes and artefacts. The heart of the collection is the Boudin paintings.

Woman with a Parasol on the Beach might be my favourite. You see the same lady later in Monet, and in Winslow Homer on the opposite side of the Atlantic. There’s the wonderful contrast between the dark formal dress and the sweep of beach and wind-pushed clouds. Is she talking on her mobile?

Boudin worked a great deal on the Normandy coast, especially at the fashionable resorts of Trouville and Deauville. He painted a number of scenes similar to On the Beach at Trouville between the 1860s and 1890s.

Boudin is extensively collected around the world, and I have created my own Boudin in Normandy collection at the lovely Artfinder.

I’ve written elsewhere about visiting Honfleur and Étretat. Here Boudin paints The Jetty and Lighthouse at Honfleur and The Cliffs at Etretat.

This painting of the Seine near Rouen looks so much like the view of the Seine from the bottom of the garden at Les Iris. I wonder where Boudin painted it.

I love the business of this scene outside the Casino de Trouville. Look at the children, and the dogs, and the tipped-over rush chair at the front.

It seems to me that being a C19 pre-impressionist painter was an excellent gig: you got to hang out in the loveliest places like The Beach at Trouville and Deauville. Check out those bathing machines.

Now here is a view that has changed. Le Havre has been extensively re-built and is on the UNESCO World Heritage List for its post-war architecture. Boats have changed too, although every 5 years or so, an armada of tall ships gathers on the Seine in Normandy. The next gathering is in June 2013.

And here’s a view that hasn’t changed, apart from a few parasols. Life goes on in the same way year after year on the beach: the resort wear, the sailing lessons, the children ducking in and out of the white-capped waves, their screams of delight echoing down the years.

New Years Day in Étretat, Normandy

14 Saturday Jan 2012

Posted by chaumierelesiris in France, Normandy, Things to do, Travel

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Art, beach, Etretat, Impressionists, Monet, New Years Day, Normandy, paintings

Is there a good way to start the new year? Celebrate midnight in style, and you wake up with a headache and a mess to tidy up, and at least one resolution broken in the first twenty-four hours. This year, with guests to entertain, we decided the headaches had to be ignored. And the mess: we decided to leave it behind.

But where to go? New Years Day was both a Sunday and a bank holiday. Northern France was closed for business. Not a museum or a restaurant to be visited. There were many small children in our party, so a walk in the forest wouldn’t be easy. That left the beach. Perfect.

I like beaches best in the dead of winter. Preferably stony, with the wind whipping salt through my hair, and a moody slate-grey sea. I am not the bikini type: for one thing, my skin fries in the heat, and another is I get bored just lying around. The beach we settled on for New Years Day was at Étretat.

Étretat isn’t the closest beach to Les Iris, but the 45 minute cross-country drive on narrow farm roads through open fields and villages is pretty. Étretat is famous for its alabaster cliffs, or falaises, which were painted by Monet, Courbet and Boudin among others. There is plenty of parking in town; park as close to the seafront as you can. Two famous rock formations are visible from the town. As you face the sea, to the left is the Porte d’Aval. There is a path to hike up to the top, from which a further falaise can be seen. At the top there is also a spectacularly situated golf course.

The Cliffs at Etretat after the storm, by Gustave Courbet.

We decided to hike in the opposite direction, up the Porte d’Amont. There were some steep steps, but overall it looked a shorter climb for the children.

Etretat, beach and the Porte d’Amont, by Claude Monet.

It took us about 30 minutes to climb to the top. There are tables overlooking the town on the way up which would make a lovely picnic spot in warmer weather. On the clifftops, cows were grazing. There is a small church. There are no fences: hold on to your children.

A few minutes along from the church there is a path that goes a little way down towards the sea from which you can look northwards. The views of the cliffs are timeless. You feel that you have been here before, that you’ve walked into a painting.

The town itself is attractive, with typical Norman architecture, and restaurants and boutiques (all closed, of course, on New Years Day).

There is a small casino, a restored covered market in the main square, and a war memorial.

But the action is centered on the seafront. The paved boardwalk has these shapely lampposts all along it. Or you can go right down onto the pebble beach, like the children did, and play in and out of the vigorous waves.

And should you find yourself here on New Years Day, bring your bikini/trunks. Because the only way to start the new year in Étretat on New Years Day is with ‘le grand frisson’ – the big chill. Baptize yourself in the frosty Atlantic waters and you start the year with a clear head and the confidence that you’ve kept at least one resolution. Then top it off by sharing a glass of champagne on the beach.

Normandie : Le grand frisson du nouvel an | Paris Normandie.

For more information about Étretat and other things to do in Normandy, visit Normandy in the Press.

Traditional decorations and the Christmas season in Honfleur

04 Wednesday Jan 2012

Posted by chaumierelesiris in Food, Normandy, Travel

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Christmas, Christmas tree, decorations, Food, home decor, Honfleur, oysters, shop

The last post described my search for French Christmas tree decorations. In the weeks after writing, I started to feel increasingly pessimistic about my chances of success. No one could tell me where to look. While we were away from Normandy, neighbours kindly decorated our cottage – a touching surprise that the children adored. The decorations, however, were not quite of the made-in-France variety I was searching for.

Then, driving after dark from Calais to Upper Normandy during the holidays, the flashing Santas and light-dripping evergreens in village after village were as gaudy as anything I had ever seen in suburban America. Did real French Christmas decorations exist?

So I was intrigued when @mrslittleboot suggested Marie Vit in Honfleur, on Rue Haute where it meets L’Homme de bois.

What a gem. Full of charming home decor ideas – including these delightful French Christmas tree decorations. I particularly like the toile hearts.

There are also baskets and baskets of what I thought were paper fans. In fact they are hand-marbled paper lampshades, each one unique. They come in various sizes. What an attractive stocking stuffer.

And Honfleur looked elegantly festive with its large fir trees and Christmas lights reflected in the old harbour. All Norman wood and red berried holly, nothing like the gaudy lights across the countryside.

As is traditional during the festive season, we lunched on the freshest oysters with a touch of lemon at a restaurant next to the Honfleur docks. And look at these seasonal table decorations, complete with sticks of cinnamon. Just lovely.

The World on our Christmas Tree

17 Saturday Dec 2011

Posted by chaumierelesiris in Travel

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Christmas, Christmas tree, decorations, Travel

When traveling for pleasure we like to find local decorations for the Christmas tree. It’s a way to remember some of the interesting places we have visited. It’s also a great excuse to buy tourist tat without making seriously expensive mistakes. My parents did the same, and their tree is heavy with adventures. My favourite is the wooden cosmonaut they picked up at Moscow airport in 1971. He hangs on the tree, a reminder of a vanished era of aspiration and confrontation.

Here are some of the decorations on our tree this year.

This glamorous shopping lady is from Colorado. She has always struck me as overly stylish for the Rockies–perhaps she is taking in the après ski scene in Aspen. We found the hand-made lace angel next to her in Tallinn, Eastonia. Tallinn’s old town is beautiful and perfectly sized for a weekend visit if you can just manage to avoid the stag party crowds. The tango dancers are from Buenos Aires, where we watched equally craggy dancers dipping and spinning around the streets of La Boca.

I wonder if the Bengal tiger is wearing lipstick, or is that the remains of dinner around his mouth? He roars fiercly at the snowmen and santa decorations. We found the sweet-faced Pinnochio in Orvieto, a hilltown in Umbria, Italy. When I lived in Italy as a child I worried through Christmas that the old witch Befana who visits on the Ephiphany would bring me the coal that naughty children get instead of gifts.

The little ladies are from Guatemala, where we marveled at the Mayan ruins in Tikal. In Iceland we stayed at the isolated Hotel Budir on the Snaefellsnes peninsula. No vikings in sight there, but it was easy to imagine elves emerging from the mysteriously shaped lava rocks all around.

This crown above and the chandelier below are English, from the Victoria & Albert Museum shop which sells unusual and unique Christmas decorations. The cowgirl is from Texas and I love her sparkling belt buckle. I’m not sure she does much cow herding in this outfit: maybe Daddy owns an oil well.

My brother clerked for a time at the Supreme Court, and he arranged for us to take a tour and hear the justices hand down a decision. It was amazing to be there and watch history in motion. The blue Matisse blue bulb is from MOMA, New York and the green bulb is from Hawaii’s National Tropical Botanical Garden.

We think of the tree a work in progress, with many gaps to be filled. There is one gaping hole that I’d like to fill quickly. We spend so much of our time in France and yet have nothing to put on the Christmas tree. So please help me – where is the best place in Paris or Normandy to find Christmas decorations? And what are the most typical French Christmas tree decorations?

chaumierelesiris

~ A fairy-tale cottage by the Seine in Normandy

Category Archives: Travel

The most famous garden in Normandy

Town Mouse, Country Mouse

Le Havre in Rain and Sun

Spring in Upper Normandy

If You Go Up To The Woods Today

From Vieux-Port to Aizier

Boudin in Normandy

New Years Day in Étretat, Normandy

Traditional decorations and the Christmas season in Honfleur

The World on our Christmas Tree

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