Giverny

N was quite busy this week, so we decided to postpone our visit to Normandy and went to Giverny, one of the final “Daytrips from Paris” listed in our guidebooks. Actually, the last one is EuroDisney...but.........meh.

First, we’ve finally wised up and started buying out tickets to attractions through FNAC. You can completely skip the line up for the very reasonal tradeoff of paying an extra Euro. We drove to Giverny (1.5 hours from Fonty, 40 min from Paris) to visit the home of Claude Monet. In my head, I was picturing it as quite quaint, based on the pictures I’ve seen. In reality, his home, the flower and the water gardens, were stunning (hyper-sympa). I like to take pictures as much as the next person, but while wandering through the gardens and hanging out on the bridge looking out at his famous lily pads, I was compelled to take almost 100. You almost feel like you are in some of his famous paintings. Although there were a lot of people there, it didn’t feel too crowded and we mostly managed to take pictures without other people’s heads in them.

The colour coordinated rows of flowers were magnificent, although, I didn’t touch them, because I think we’ve all learned that I am the kiss of death to flora. (Pleased to report, I have managed to keep all my herbs alive...not the basil of course, RIP. I cooked ahi tuna with my own rosemary on Friday!)

And look! Here’s The Last Supper sculpted out of sand! We happened upon it while wandering around the town before leaving. (I don’t think there was a dog there, I’m chalking that up to artistic liberty).

We headed into Paris to meet some Canadian friends for a delicious Mediterranean dinner. It’s great to see people from home..hint hint. We parted ways and while driving back, we noticed the Eiffel Tower all lit up. I don’t think I’ve ever seen it at night-time, so I suggested that N to dive up to Trocadero (which I had visited Wednesday morning) assuming we’d be treated to quite the view in a relatively quiet spot. You know who else had that same thought? Every tour company in Paris. There were about 25 busses parked in front of it, so when the lights on the tower started twinkling at 10pm, we missed most of it frantically trying to find a parking spot. We took a cue from Stuff French People Like, and parked in a totally inappropriate spot, ran out, took some photos and hopped back in the car. It was really magnificent.