After departing Paris last night at 2 a.m., CroisiEurope’s Botticelli sailed the serpentine Seine in the direction of Vernon. With our arrival scheduled at 1 p.m., we enjoyed a morning of scenic cruising, certainly one of the highlights of any river cruise through Europe and something you just can’t get on a motorcoach tour.

Imagine sitting in the lounge, with a cafe au lait in hand, or on the top deck, with the summer sunlight warming your face, as you cruise through the French countryside. Minute by minute, as Botticelli made its way downriver, the oversized windows in the main lounge framed scenes that would have inspired the great impressionists who found this region so beautiful.

Today, we would visit the home and gardens of one such impressionist, the artist Claude Monet, who lived in a small village along the banks of the Seine, only three miles from Vernon. Monet was one of the founders of French Impressionism. The term, in fact, is derived from his paining, Impression, soleil levant (Impression, Sunrise). His ambition of documenting the French countryside led him to adopt a method of painting the same scene repeatedly to capture the changing light and passing of seasons, and in Monet’s mind, there was no place better to do that than in Giverny.

At a cost of €26, the 4.5-hour excursion to Giverny included the €9.50 entrance fee to Monet’s home and gardens. If you were up for a good stroll, you could walk from Vernon to Giverny on a dedicated footpath. Plan on nearly an hour for the 5-kilometer (3 mile) walk.

Giverny certainly becomes more charming when intoned in French than when pronounced phonetically in English. “Give Er Knee” becomes “Jeev Er Nay,” and thus the magic of Monet begins in this exotic-sounding place.

Monet purchased his home and property in Giverny in 1883 and began a landscaping project that included the flower gardens that we came to visit — as well as the lily ponds that became the subject of his best-known works.

Upon entering the complex, we proceeded through a tunnel underneath the road, to the lily ponds. Monet began painting the water lilies in 1899, first with a Japanese bridge as the central feature. Today, during our tour, nearly everyone wanted to stand on that bridge to snap photos. In fact, during our entire tour, the narrow pathways through the gardens were packed with tourists eager to capture on camera the landscape that Monet captured on canvas.

Monet continued painting the lilies in a series of large-scale painting that would occupy him continuously for the next two decades of his life. The series of 250 oil paintings are in museums throughout the world, with eight Water Lilies murals at their permanent home at Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris.

Back through the tunnel, we emerged in Monet’s gardens, where a variety of flowers were in full bloom. At the upper end sat Monet’s home. The sprawling, and utterly charming, pink house with green shutters has been lovingly restored by the Claude Monet Foundation. We stood in line for about 15 minutes for a stroll through the interior that hinted at the vestiges of the artist’s daily life.

The home and gardens were bathed in the sunlight that Monet so admired. His home was bright and cheery, with a yellow dining room, blue living room and large windows on the upper floor that opened onto the beautiful flower garden below.

The artist began to develop cataracts and in 1923 had two surgeries to remove them. He continued to paint afterward but with different perceptions of colors than before the surgeries. We learned that he repainted some of his water lilies scenes, with bluer water lilies than when he suffered from cataracts.

We returned to Botticelli in the late afternoon, had dinner, and then spent a few hours sitting on the top deck, admiring a gorgeous sunset and landscapes of changing impressions that inspired some of the world’s greatest art. Tomorrow, Caudebec-en-Caux & The Abbey Trail, another adventure as we continue our cruise along the Seine.

I’m cruising on CroisiEurope’s Botticelli from the heart of Paris to the heart of Honfleur. 

Be sure to follow along in real time on Instagram and Twitter @avidcruiser, using the hashtag #livevoyagereport.  You’ll find a listing of each daily report in the calendar below this post.

CroisiEurope, Botticelli, Paris-Honfleur & Return