Chartes and Giverny

Thursday, June 9th, 2011
    Today was another well-planned excursion with everyone from USD. We were fortunate enough to visit the cathedral in Chartes. Although the grand entrance was being renovated, the inside was gorgeous and full of windows upon windows of colorful stained glass telling famous stories from the bibles and even stories from those who commissioned certain windows. Definitely helpful to have been raised in a Catholic elementary and high school and to have taken Biblical Studies and Catholic Theology at USD.
     We ate lunch at a restaurant in Chartes. Sarah and I were joined by the Political Science professor and a student in his class. I've definitely found these lunches with the program to be very beneficial as the professors seem eager to mingle with students who aren't in their class. We discussed the other study abroad trips he's been apart of - he highly recommends Morocco! By the end of the meal, I easily added Istanbul, a favorite of the professor, to countries I need to visit.
     We then took a two hour bus journey to Giverny, the town home to Claude Monet's farmhouse and gardens. Regardless of how beautiful and peaceful the gardens were, or I at least would have imagined them to be without the masses of tourists eager snapping away photos at every opportunity, the gardens made me appreciate his work so much more.

     I learned that he was the primary gardener/ architect of the garden and his six or so hired gardens were merely to assist him in maintaining it as he directed. Also, when observing the large, original paintings in the living room of his farmhouse, I was truly able to notice the thick brushstrokes containing nearly every color on the color palette, except black. Up close, I observed that the brown he created was a few dabs of red blue and green.

     The lilly pads on the ponds appeared untouched from Monet’s last painting of them a hundred years ago that I felt like Monet himself could have been wandering these very gardens a few weeks ago.