11 November – Cruise the Seine to Vernon

We got up this morning in complete fog and didn’t go for a walk in the morning. So we had breakfast and went to a briefing about Impressionists.

After lunch, we decided we didn’t want to go for a long bus ride to see where Van Gogh painted and committed suicide, so we just went for a lovely walk along the Seine. We need a Seine in Maine to walk along. Very restful and nice. Anyway, Vernon has a 1000 year old Church, Colegaile Notre Dame, and we went in and looked around. Like everything else in France, it is undergoing restoration and has scaffolding around it, but still quite nice.

Vernon is known as the “town which freed itself’. The resistance managed to blow up the bridge to hinder the Nazis and didn’t have to wait for the Allies to blow it up.

After the visit to the church, we returned to the ship to use the bathroom, since everything, including bathrooms is closed on Armistice Day. We then strolled along the Seine and saw the Old Mill and a castle across the bridge. Originally there were a bunch of mills spread out over the river and several of the old piers remain.