Follow our journey on this map.

Day 53. This is the last day on the river; we fly home tomorrow.

We woke up in Le Pecq this morning. Le Pecq is a town of about 15,000 people. The notable thing of interest here is Château de Malmaison. It was purchased by Joséphine de Beauharnais in April 1799 for herself and her husband, General Napoléon Bonaparte, the future Napoléon I of France, at that time away fighting the Egyptian Campaign. Malmaison was a run-down estate, seven miles west of central Paris that encompassed nearly 150 acres of woods and meadows. Upon his return, Bonaparte expressed fury at Joséphine for purchasing such an expensive house with the money she had expected him to bring back from the Egyptian campaign. The house, for which she had paid well over 300,000 francs, needed extensive renovations; she spent a fortune doing them.

Joséphine endeavored to transform the large estate into "the most beautiful and curious garden in Europe, a model of good cultivation". She located rare and exotic plants and animals to enhance the gardens. From 1803 until her death in 1814, Josephine cultivated nearly 200 new plants in France for the first time. Malmaison was fully restored in the early 20th century.

One of the things that Joséphine was proud of was her black swans. We walked out to see them and they were quite impressive. Equally as impressive was the huge cedar tree that is said to have been planted by Joséphine when she was living there. I took a photo of the tree with Mae close to it to establish scale.

The photos show only a portion of the large home. Many rooms were too small to capture an effective shot; others just weren’t that interesting. As I write that, I realize that we have seen so many castles, manors, and churches in the last two months we can qualify as critics. Or just critical. Dunno.

After a few hours at Malmaison, we headed back to the ship for lunch. As it is our final day in Europe, we figured we needed to start eating some American food. Yep, hotdog and a cheeseburger!

The afternoon was spent napping and packing. Dinner was really relaxed in the outside dining area where we have had every dinner. The Eiffel Tower in our direct line of sight never got old.

Heading to the airport tomorrow morning.

Only one more post to come!