My Epic France Trip is winding down, but today turned out to be special.

It was a travel day. But then when I was looking at details, I realized that my two hotels were only an hour and a half apart, and the second hotel had a check-in time of 5:00 pm. What would I do all day?

And then I noticed that the Abbaye de Royaumont was right on the route between the two hotels!

Why was I excited about that? Well, that’s a story.

In 1998, I was living in Germany with my family, and I got to attend a retreat held by the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators at the Abbaye de Royaumont, outside Paris. I wrote about how important that retreat was in a Project 52 post. I made lifelong writing buddies and dear friends at that retreat. We formed an email critique group and corresponded regularly ever since.

In 2005, SCBWI was holding another conference there. And we got the group together! In fact, the four of us Sisters of Royaumont spent time in Paris together before and after the conference. But even more significant was that this Paris trip happened the week after my husband told me he wanted a divorce. And the morning after that happened, I decided I would pursue my Master’s in Library Science and become a librarian. (As well as still hoping to write.)

So that second trip to Abbaye de Royaumont happened at a terrible time in my life – but ended up full of hope and joy. My friends fattened me up, listened to my woes, made me laugh, and above all filled me with hope.

Last night I was working on the #Sonderbooks25 post about 2005, so I read all the Project 52 posts about 2005, including the one about Royaumont. Honestly, I’d nearly forgotten how utterly heartbroken and bewildered I was feeling at that time. But I hadn’t forgotten how much the Sisters of Royaumont sustained me!

I hadn’t forgotten my determination to become a librarian and to become a writer.

So it felt good to come back to Royaumont and say aloud to my past self, “Yeah, Sondy, that worked out!”

Becoming a librarian turned into being on the Newbery Committee, winning the Allie Beth Martin Award from the Public Library Association, serving on several more award committees, and above all getting a job I love as Youth Materials Selector for my public library system.

And writing? At this very moment, I have an agent, and she has sent my book proposal to one editor at a major publishing company and my full manuscript to another! (Not to mention 25 years of writing Sonderbooks!)

So it felt good to roam the Abbaye and just mark this full circle moment.

It was, however, much nicer weather when I was there in April and November! Today was HOT – high of 104 degrees.

It was pretty cool in the abbey, so I lingered maybe longer than I would have otherwise. And tried to stay in the shade.

I did load up in the gift shop, and couldn’t resist a puzzle of the cloister garden, even though it will mean I have to expand my suitcase. (But that sort of thing is precisely why I brought an expandable suitcase.) Unfortunately, the Tea Salon was booked with a group, so I settled for a Kind bar and water in the car. And soon after made a stop in a small town for an ice cream and a coke.

Next, I’d planned to do some hiking in a forest nearby. That didn’t sound fun on such a hot day, so I found a Creperie in the same area. But alas! When I put it into GPS, the machine consistently tried to make me go down a dirt road that led into a forest. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to turn around – it looked like a bridle trail. So I decided to go ahead and go to my next hotel early. It was actually a B&B, and they did let me in early.

By then I was pretty tired of narrow 30 kph roads – I’m not so proficient with stick shift that those don’t stress me out a little. But I decided that since going out to eat in France is always a good idea, I’d go to a different Creperie in the town of Chantilly recommended by the B&B. I had a delicious salad with smoked salmon and apples, followed by crepes with bananas, chocolate syrup, and ice cream. Delicious!

The B&B is not air-conditioned, alas, but it’s a downstairs room, and it is cooler than outside, so I’m hoping I’ll be able to sleep.

Oh, and the sunburn on my feet is still viciously bad, but the pain subsided somewhere in the middle of the day. I don’t think it’s actually turned the corner yet, and it’s still blistered, but walking around didn’t hurt as much as first getting out of bed in the morning had done.

I didn’t wake up too optimistic today. The third day after they got severely sunburned, my feet hurt like the fires of hell. Monet’s House and Garden the day before had been hot and crowded – and today was supposed to be even hotter! Forecast: 103 degrees Fahrenheit.

But what I’d tentatively planned for the day was a road trip to Étretat. I decided to go anyway because:

Yes, it’s a four-hour round trip, but my rental car is air-conditioned. (The one I rented in Germany two years ago was not, so I don’t take this for granted.) And it’s kind of fun to drive in France. A little stressful, but lovely to see the French countryside.

Yes, it would be hot and I’d be outdoors, but the forecast for Étretat was only 95! And since it’s on the coast, maybe there would be ocean breezes. [And yes! That was true!]

Besides, what was the alternative? Sitting in my hotel room? The other good part was that I didn’t have any set schedule, so I could turn back when I got tired and hot. Besides, the day before driving and walking hadn’t been too bad, once I got through the pain of putting on socks and shoes. (The shoes helped my feet not bend as much with each step.) I do have sandals with me, but I really didn’t want to risk the sun hitting my feet in any way, and besides, those sandals hurt the blisters on the bottoms of my feet (which were mostly but not completely better by then).

So I set out. And yes, the drive was nice and only a little stressful. I have decided that I kind of hate the car beeping at me every time my speed tips over the speed limit. Especially going through villages where it changes every kilometer or so. Even worse is that at times, the steering would go a little wonky, it would beep much more loudly, and the dashboard would flash KEEP CONTROL!

How was I supposed to keep control? Hold onto the steering wheel more tightly? Eventually I decided the best option was to slow down when that went off, but it honestly kind of terrified me. Why was it doing that? How was I supposed to keep control other than steering it where I want to go? What was up with that?

[Ha! I just googled it for that car, and it’s about the “Active Driver Assist” and the “Lane Centering Function.” No wonder it especially happened on curves. Maybe I veered a little out of center, and it was taking over?] Anyway, it never came on too long at a time, and definitely kept me awake.

Once I got to Étretat, I missed a turn, but by a roundabout way found the parking lot where I’d planned to park – and got the last spot. Three of us were having trouble paying for parking, but then a French person walked up and showed us how it was done. I walked from there to the town square – and there was a little train taking people to the Jardins du Étretat! That sounded much much better than climbing the mountain.

On top, I didn’t see the entrance to the gardens. But there were paths along the cliffs, and I had a splendid time, walking along them, taking pictures of the English channel and the amazing cliffs that Monet used to paint. There was a strong wind blowing, and I actually felt cool, despite the sun beating down.

Oh, that was the one fly in the ointment today. Before I left, I put on copious amounts of sunscreen – and got it a little too close to my right eye. Once I started sweating in the car, that eye started stinging and watering. And that’s super persistent sunscreen, because it continued all day long! I finally used facewash on it when I got back to the hotel. So all day I was blinking, and trying to wipe water away from my eyes (hoping it would get the sunscreen) and blowing my nose.

After I circled back down on the cliff path and was ready to walk back to the train stop, I found the entrance to the gardens. So I paid the entrance money and started wandering inside. The very first thing I did was find a booth that sold water and drank it down.

But then, as I was wandering around, I noticed that I’d started overheating. The gardens were sheltered from that sustaining ocean breeze, and it was now early afternoon. I made the executive decision to call it a day – and I’m proud of myself for that. I’d gotten the idea of the gardens, and I really didn’t want to end up with heat stroke.

So I climbed back up to the train stop and took the train back down into town. There was a pharmacy across from the town square, so I asked for something for sunburn – and a few hours later, the spray they gave me seems to be working pretty well.

Then it was walk back to the car, then a two-hour drive back to the hotel. There was one place where it took me three tries to figure out where the GPS actually wanted me to go. It had said “Follow the road,” but the road forked 3 ways! I guess I had to try all three. But anyway, I made it back.

And the hotel has a restaurant open all hours! I didn’t have to wait for 7 or 7:30 like the other hotel restaurants. So I got the Plat du Jour – fish of the day with vegetables. It was delicious. Then I grabbed some ice cream (melon and banana! Yum!) which I took to my room – where first thing, I took off my shoes and socks and sprayed them with the medicine from the Pharmacy.

And I still have some time to relax in the cool room.

So today restored my faith in my vacation, made me no longer tempted to try to get an earlier flight. Even if the next place is horrible, I’ve really only got two days left – then the day I fly home.

Oh, I have tickets to an Equestrian Show on Thursday. I’d been hoping it’s air-conditioned. Well, I just received an email that they’re changing the time from 1:00 pm to 11:00 am because of the heat. So I guess not. But hopefully, in the morning, it won’t be too bad. Anyway, only a couple more days….

Well, the first half of my France trip was epic.

[Note: This post was written the evening of the day described, but I’m adding the pictures later. I don’t say a whole lot about Monet’s House in the text because it was really, really hot. But it was beautiful, so I will insert pictures throughout the text.]

I’m glad that I dropped into Giverny on my first day in France to orient myself and enjoy the gardens. I was glad I slowly browsed the Impressionists’ Museum and learned about Monet’s time in Giverny. And I’m glad I spent the previous Friday at a lovely cool garden in Brittany. Because today was HOT. Monet’s garden was lovely, but crowded and hot. Monet’s house, no surprise, did not have air conditioning, though they’d set up fans in most rooms. And it was very crowded. And I was dripping sweat. And my feet hurt. A lot.

But I did enjoy the gardens and seeing the water lilies blooming in real life.

I did enjoy seeing Monet’s house, which is much larger than I’d realized. Both the yellow room and the blue room reminded me of kitchens in two homes my mother had decorated. (The colors felt like an exact match, not the decorations.)

So I am glad I went, but I did the outing, got the idea, then spent some time in the air-conditioned gift shop, then stopped for a sandwich, then drove back to the hotel with the air conditioner blaring, then bought ice cream at the hotel, then went back to my room, took off my shoes, and took a nap. And declared today’s afternoon and evening as a Rest Day.

Let me explain a little bit. About a week before I left, I checked the forecast, and it showed all the way through my trip as never getting hotter than 83 degrees Fahrenheit, and mostly upper 70s. Perfect! And that matched what happened two years ago when I visited Germany. And that matched my ten years experience of living in Germany. I think I checked right up to the day before my trip, and the forecast still said the same thing. So I brought jeans and knit tops, but nothing for especially hot weather except the shorts for the Mont Saint-Michel adventures in the bay.

Well, the forecast changed. High of 100 degrees today. 103 tomorrow. 105 Wednesday – when I leave this air-conditioned hotel. 105 Thursday. Finally down to 95 on Friday, the day I leave.

In my ten years living in Germany, there was only ONE heat wave where it got hotter than 100 degrees. The thing is, there’s not much air conditioning – because they don’t normally need it. So this is going to be challenging.

And then there’s my feet. I do still have blisters on the bottoms, the worst one being my right big toe where the blister broke and the skin on the bottom of the toe tore off. The rest is mostly better, at least in comparison to the sunburn on the tops. Today, there were blisters on my right foot. So it’s indeed a second-degree sunburn. I’ve had a lot of experience with those – Hey, I’m fair-skinned and grew up in Southern California before the super strong sunscreens were invented – and this felt that bad. I’m only glad it didn’t come with heat stroke like most of my second-degree sunburns did – probably because it’s really a small area.

But it really does hurt. It feels like the skin on the tops of my feet has been drawn tight. And then any movement of my feet – like taking a step – feels like it will tear the skin apart. I really hope it will turn the corner soon. I don’t like that it seemed worse today on the second day after the burn.

Wearing shoes helps the skin not stretch as much when I take a step, so I was okay in Giverny. But it was pretty painful to put on the shoes and socks, so once I took them off, I’m not putting them on again today. Instead, I’m sitting around with my feet up, periodically reapplying cortisone cream.

Tomorrow I will probably brave going to Étretat. The clincher is that the temperature there is “only” supposed to be 95. And I can always look around a little and then duck back into my air-conditioned car.

Okay, Sunday June 21, 2026, was probably the least exciting day of the trip. But this was just as well, because my feet were trashed.

See yesterday’s epic outing across the bay of Mont Saint-Michel. I’d ended up with burst blisters on the bottoms of my feet and severe sunburn on the tops. I’d brought some cortisone cream on the trip expecting bugs might find me (so far not yet), so I tried slathering it on the sunburn and then painfully putting on socks and shoes and absolutely not taking them off until I was done for the day.

It was a hot day – high of 97. My little attic room at Manoir de la Roche Torin wasn’t too hot since I’d figured out to leave the window open at night with the Rolladen cracked like a screen. But still carrying two trips of luggage down two flights of stairs is hot work, and I was ready for an air-conditioned drive.

It was three and a half hours to my next hotel, and check-in time wasn’t until 4:00. I did take my time getting ready to leave and left around 10:30. So my plan had been to stop for lunch at Deauville, with a Promenade along the beach. It was only a little out of the way and was raved about in the guidebook.

Well, I needed to use the restroom before I got to Deauville, so I stopped at one of the rest areas off the Autoroute. And honestly, I’m not quite sure why European visitors for the World Cup have been so impressed with American rest stops, because the ones in France that I’ve stopped at have been every bit as good as the big rest stops in Virginia. Several kinds of food, lots of touristy knickknacks to buy, and even free restrooms. I had a Mozzarella and Tomato wrap for lunch while I was there, and it was absolutely delicious.

It wasn’t far from there to Deauville. But it turned out that going to the beach in France on a very hot, sunshiny Sunday is a really popular idea. I missed a turn into a big public parking lot early on (because GPS was taking me to the beach), but it was at least a mile or two from the beach. I did drive into town – full of traffic, full of people – close to the beach. I got the idea of what a quaint place it is, but didn’t find any place to park at all, and decided I didn’t really want to walk along a promenade anyway, my feet being as sore as they were.

By the time I’d decided that, I’d spent enough time to better hit check-in time at my next hotel. I made a stop at another rest area for gas, and then headed to my next hotel, the Logis Hotel La Ruche in Rolleboise, near Giverny. For three nights!

And it has air conditioning! Huzzah!

So although yes, I got overheated bringing my luggage up the stairs (an elevator would have been too much to ask for!), I could then sit in the air-conditioned room and cool off.

This is important because I jinxed myself by gloating about how perfect the weather was going to be on my trip – after I looked at a forecast that showed highs in the 70s and low 80s. Well, they have drastically adjusted that forecast. Tomorrow’s high is supposed to be 99, and the rest of my time in France will have highs over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. For context, in my ten years living in Germany, we only had ONE heat wave where it got over 100 degrees. (My next hotel has no air conditioning, but it does have a pool. So I may spend some time in it.)

And my room has a view of the Seine!

And there are multiple restaurants – so I can get food at any time and don’t have to wait for 7 or 7:30 pm when the hotel restaurant opens. I went down soon after arrival and had a salad for dinner. (Wasn’t very hungry because I’d gotten ice cream at the rest stop.)

So I may do some more adjusting of plans. Tomorrow I have an 11 am ticket for Monet’s House and Garden, but when I’m done with that, I think it might be nice to hang out right here. Let the Personal Retreat part of my trip begin!

This was it! The big day I was going to fulfill the dream! And walk across the bay of Mont Saint-Michel to the island – and back!

Here we go:

[Note: This was written that evening in my hotel room. I’m adding in pictures after I got back. I’ll distribute pictures through the text.]

I probably should have taken note of how often the tour company emphasized the distance – 7 kilometers – one way! And I should have considered that I already had blisters on the bottoms of my feet. And I definitely should have put sunscreen on my feet after I took off the shoes and socks I wore to drive to the meeting place!

I’ll be honest – I could not keep up. The mud felt better on my feet than hard sand waves – but in a lot of places, there were rocks under six inches of squooshy mud, which did hurt those blisters. And it was a lot more work to scrunch through knee-high mud than even to wade through rivers that went up to my thighs. Bottom line, the guide walked fast.

Selfishly, I was glad that there were three stragglers – a group with a little dog – who were as far behind me as I was behind the main group – so I didn’t feel quite as bad about not keeping up. At one point, the guide did go back for the lady having trouble in the mud and gave her a hand. But it wasn’t like you could get lost in the bay. I did worry about if I fell over in the mud or in a river, if I’d get help on time. Though it would have been nice to walk with friends who’d give you a hand in tough spots, I was kind of glad that I hadn’t dragged anyone else on an adventure that ended up being a strenuous workout.

There was a nice family – a husband and wife and daughter – who kindly summarized in English what the guide said at the stops. For all the French CDs I listened to, my French fled when I got here – but French people invariably speak much better English than my French, and have been very kind.

We walked very close to the island of Tombelaine in the middle of the bay.

By this time, I realized the tops of my feet were getting sunburned. (It’s a bad thing if I notice that while still in the sun!) So I tried to stand with my feet in the shade of my legs when we stopped for the guide to talk. But I still didn’t think to pull out the sunscreen in my bag and apply it!

It did feel amazing to be there in the middle of the bay.

I am glad I did the whole crossing of the bay. I didn’t know it without doing both, but the High Tides Tour would have been enough.

If anybody reading this ever visits Mont Saint-Michel, do one of the tours that takes you into the bay. They’re totally worth it!

But let me compare the two tours I did in case you only have time for one:

The High Tides tour is not only shorter than the Traditional Crossing (2 hours instead of 6 hours) – it also goes at a more leisurely pace. It’s more of a Wonder-filled Stroll, whereas the Traditional Crossing is more of a Goal-oriented Workout (get to the other side!). We also stopped more frequently on the High Tides tour.

Both tours played in quicksand (so VERY cool – nothing like the quicksand that terrified me on Gilligan’s Island!), but experiencing the tide come sweeping in on the High Tides tour is just incredible.

As of a week ago, I’m 62 years old. So my stamina may not be what it once was, and I may be in denial about that. I also have short legs and had blistered feet, so besides taking 296 pictures, that’s my excuse for not keeping up. I did make it the whole way there and back.

We had a bit more than a half-hour break at Mont Saint-Michel to rest and eat a snack.

Even though looking back, I realize it would have been much more prudent to settle for the High Tides Tour – especially once I realized I had blisters on my feet – I still can’t help but be glad I did it! The High Tides Tour was a thing of wonder and joy. The Traditional Crossing was a really hard thing across really interesting sand and rivers and rocks and mud – and I’m proud to have done it!

This is how far the stragglers were behind me. But I was that far behind the main group:

I’m pretty sure the water was deeper on the way back.

Now, on the High Tides Tour, I wore neoprene footies to protect my feet. But it got me wondering what the mud would actually feel like. I wanted a more visceral experience. Yeah, I probably should have reversed that and gone barefoot on the short walk. My blisters did burst, and I lost a big flap of skin on my right big toe. But what turned out to be even worse was that I put on sunscreen back at the hotel before I left – when I was wearing shoes. The tops of my feet got a vicious sunburn. Makes me really really glad I put on sunscreen everywhere else!

But – it is really hard to walk! I may be doing more modifications of my plans for the rest of the trip.

Added later: That was a bad sunburn. Second-degree, complete with blisters, was very painful on my trip and took three weeks to heal – but still – it was totally worth it!

I wrote the above that night when I was exhausted and had sore feet. A month later, when inserting the pictures, I think of it as an awesome experience that I will remember the rest of my life.

Friday, June 19, was my fourth day in France. I didn’t realize it was Juneteenth until I turned on my computer and the google background was the Museum of African American History.

When you go on vacation, you have to make choices. I really really like to make those choices ahead of time.

Today my plan was to go to Pointe du Grouin.

I read about it in a guidebook and looked it up on Google. It was almost an hour drive from my hotel, and it wasn’t real clear how far I’d have to walk. Another friend said I really should see St. Malo. That it’s amazing. And the guidebooks concur. But it’s even further past Pointe du Grouin. So my plan had been to go to Pointe du Grouin first, then St. Malo, then back.

But – I still had blisters on the bottoms of my feet. And I couldn’t get a straight answer from google how close to Pointe du Grouin I could even park. Also, my adventures the day before had made me less excited about driving on small roads through towns. An hour drive one-way sounded like a lot.

So – I grabbed a brochure at my hotel for Parc Botanique de Haut Bretagne. I think I’d briefly looked at it before my trip when I was looking for gardens – and then had decided I’d focus on the coast. Well, when I looked it up on Google yesterday, it was less than 30 minutes away, and mostly on the Autoroute.

It’s always hard for me to change plans. But even with sore feet, walking around gardens sounded like a more relaxing way to spend the day than hiking a nebulous length hike and then trying to figure out where in a city I could park and walk around.

Now, I do think it took me longer than 30 minutes to get there, and that my GPS was up to more nebulous redirects without telling me. Because I got to thinking about roundabouts on the way to the Parc – and then there were absolutely none on the way back. And quite a few times the British lady GPS voice said “Please,” which I think is what she does when I have been getting directions wrong, instead of saying, “I’m begging you! Take the third exit!”

The Botanic Park was just gorgeous. Various gardens, artfully arranged. I went kind of haphazardly at first, looking for the Tea Room, which I eventually found – but it was closed. So I went back to the restaurant at the entrance and had a small salad and water. (Later on, the Tea Room was open, but I wasn’t hungry.)

And it turned out to be a Castle! Castle #178 on my personal Castle Count.

During lunch, I read over the park brochure they’d given me in English. It turned out they had a marked route they recommend as a circuit of the park, so I followed that afterward and only got lost a couple times. But it was a lovely place to get lost in. I don’t think most of the blooms were exactly in season, but there was enough blooming all at once to be wonderful.

This warning in the bamboo grove of 7 years bad luck made me laugh when I saw someone had ignored it.

It was all so peaceful.

I especially loved the Japanese gardens with bridges and statues and winding paths.

Oh, and I discovered reading the brochure that there was a Minotaur statue at the heart of the maze I’d briefly explored – so of course I had to try again.

I spent a couple more hours after lunch, took less time getting back to the hotel (why I strongly suspect I’d missed a turn and gotten a scenic tour on the way there), and got back around 4 pm.

So today’s pictures are mainly of flowers. Lots and lots of flowers.

At 6 pm, I did a little walking on the path across from the hotel, to see if I could make it to the bay. (It’s very close.) But the first path dead ended, and the second path had a gate. It said be sure to re-close the gate because of sheep. And even though I’d seen other people on this path, by that time I admitted I’d walked enough today, and I went back to the hotel.

Looking back at the hotel:

There’s a part of me that doesn’t like changing plans. This means I will most likely never see Pointe du Grouin or St Malo. When you’re on vacation, you have to make choices, and making choices – with permanent consequences – is tough.

But you know what I’m telling myself? It’s totally okay to change plans. It’s okay to not see some wonderful things in this area. And if I’m not disappointed, nobody will be. I had an incredibly beautiful day, walking among flowers.

I’m in France!

I write this having made it to my first hotel, the Château Corneille. [It’s more than 100 years old! It has a name! I’m calling it my Castle #176. It’s not fortified, so more of a palace than most castles in my Castle Count, but it’s good enough for this American!]

I’m not sure if I’ll get around to actually posting this and adding pictures while on the road. But I thought that writing the text while it’s fresh, would be good. [Edited to add: These posts were written during the trip, but I’m adding in pictures and posting later.]

My flight yesterday went really smoothly. I’d decided to give in and download the United app. I’d purchased the tickets with miles – had to purchase additional miles, but it was still cheaper – and that came with an included checked bag. I’ve resisted the trend of checking in before you even get to the airport – what if you don’t make it? But I gave in and checked in and checked my bag – and everything went super quickly from there. Dropped off my bag at the curb and then headed to the gate. That is a couple miles away at Dulles, but I still got there with almost two hours to spare. Which is all good.

There were some glitches on the plane. Turns out, wearing both a mask and hearing aids isn’t a great idea. I’d take the mask off one ear to get a drink or something – and my hearing aids would come off. I didn’t wear the mask the whole flight, but at least in the busy coming and going parts. Then the new travel pillow I got didn’t work out too great. The good side – I was very well cushioned, and I did have a window seat. But it was almost too big and I was drooping inside the pillow. But the scary part – I leaned against the window to start – and got vicious pain in my neck exactly where my right vertebral artery dissection happened.

This is scary because fifteen years ago I had a stroke caused by a right vertebral artery dissection – that happened when I slept on a plane. That time, I didn’t have a neck pillow at all, so I’d always blamed it on that and that we hit turbulence while I was sleeping. So to get some bad pain in my neck just from leaning that way on a plane – that was scary. And it continued long enough for me to worry.

But the good news is that I started leaning the other way and eventually, at least after I stopped trying to sleep, the pain went away. I didn’t get much sleep, though, but I did get some rest. And I did get some good reading done. I’m reading Old Bones, by Aaron Elkins – a mystery set at Mont St-Michel, that a friend told me about. Almost finished it on the plane. And hearing aids are fantastic for listening to an audiobook on the plane, so I did that when I needed to watch what was happening and while I was eating. I discovered this evening that hearing aids are also great for dining alone and listening to an audiobook. I’ve been known to bring a physical book when dining alone – this is much subtler.

It did turn out, though that the excitement of being in France, plus coffee on the plane, had me wide awake as we got off the plane, went through customs and I found the rental car office. I was in a different terminal than my reservation said (I booked it through the airline, why would they do that?) – but he had a car a little bit larger than what I’d reserved, so that worked out. (It’s still small.)

I landed at 7:30 am, so I was sitting in the rental car around 8:30. But it went really smoothly. In the garage, I hooked up my phone to it right away and chose “Android Auto” – and the directions are seamlessly integrated with the car, so I had a map on the dashboard and a highlight right behind the steering wheel telling me how much further before the next turn. I was happy that traffic was completely fine – I’d worried a little about rush hour – despite mostly being on roads with only two lanes on each side. I had an hour and a half drive to Giverny to the Impressionists Museum, but I took more like two hours. That might have been because my first time out with this car, I stayed in the slow lane behind a truck who almost led me all the way to Giverny. I figured I wasn’t in a hurry.

Early on, though, the car started beeping at me! It was very startling, and I didn’t want to look too hard at the dashboard to figure out what was going wrong. I didn’t see anything flashing that I was out of oil or gas or had a flat tire, anyway.

It took me a while – after I noticed that the current speed limit was displayed behind the steering wheel, and, yes, changed when I passed a sign that changed it – to realize that the beeping was when I exceeded the speed limit! Okay, it was really annoying, but ultimately I’m thankful for it. Because if there’s one thing I don’t want to do in a foreign country, it’s get pulled over for speeding. However, later when the roads changed to two-lane roads, with one in each direction, some cars behind me seemed kind of impatient when I scrupulously followed the speed limit. I don’t think their cars were beeping at them.

But oh my goodness, the countryside was beautiful! It made me feel like I was in a painting. And that got me thinking: Did I feel like I was in a painting because I’ve seen so many of Monet’s paintings? Or was Monet compelled to paint it because it is a quintessential painting-worthy landscape? Or both? And then I wondered, if Monet had lived during the time of color photography, would he have been as compelled to paint? I mean, this beauty begs to be captured. Would he have chosen a different method for capturing it in a different time?

Anyway, I arrived in Giverny and the GPS was asking me to go down some sketchy roads, so I just parked at a great big lot designed for tourists and joined the other tourists walking into town. And Giverny is in bloom! Walking through it was a treat. I had been envious of a Facebook friend who visited Giverny during tulip time, and I still think that would be amazing – but it is still amazing.

And then the museum! I purchased an audiotour and listened to every single stop (seventeen of them) and delighted that I didn’t have anyone with me who would get impatient with me. And read every sign by every painting. It’s not a big museum, so I could do all that in a couple hours. Right now, they’re featuring an exhibit about Monet in Giverny before his Water Lilies paintings. It told about how he moved to Giverny, became more successful, and then was able to buy a home and make the garden what he wanted it to be. The paintings were mostly of landscapes around Giverny, and they were truly wonderful.

I also walked in the Museum Gardens after that. They’ve got a haystack in a field with poppies in front of it and a big hill behind it – and I felt like I’d stepped into one of the paintings I’d just seen.

Then I grabbed a sandwich and iced tea at a café. By the way, the gray morning had turned into an incredibly lovely day with blue skies and white, puffy clouds and gentle breezes. I was starting to get tired after that, so it was good I only had another half-hour to drive to my hotel.

And my hotel is a castle! Well, it’s more of a manor, but by my old criteria – It’s more than 100 years old and has a name – I’m going to count it as the 176th castle I’ve touched – Château Corneille.

They did let me check in a tiny bit early. Then I took a nap for a couple hours and even woke up before the alarm I’d set went off. Next up was dinner in the hotel restaurant. And oh my goodness – It was a three-course meal, and each course was exquisite. I ate outside, and it was idyllic – breezes blowing and birds enthusiastically singing. (Had I mentioned? Giverny was loud with happy birds, too. I think it’s all the flowers.)

Now, some swarms of gnats showed up, and a man eating near me started smoking. But those blew over and it was lovely. I did listen to my (wonderful) audiobook after I’d soaked up all that birdsong.

So that was my first day in France for 2026. It’s now 9:25 pm and the sun isn’t nearly down. So this makes for a nice time to reflect on the day and simply be thankful.

Tomorrow: Mont Saint-Michel!