Continuation of my June in Paris story, celebrating my 75th birthday with my daughter and granddaughter.
On our fourth day we slept in a little. My daughter and I did our usual breakfast buffet in the hotel basement and brought my granddaughter a croissant.
We had plans to go to the Arc de Triomphe and took the Metro train before going on a tour to Giverny to see Monet’s home and gardens. We took the Metro (underground subway) to the Arc. We couldn’t figure out how to get to the Arc itself, which was located in the center of a circle like our Monument Circle here in Indy, but with 4 lanes of fast moving traffic. My daughter’s map app took us to the wrong side of the circle to cross. We saw others dart thru the traffic, so we did the same, dodging angry drivers. Only to find out when we got to the monument there is an underground tunnel on the opposite side. No signage that we could see or read, and we tried to translate. We took the elevator to the top and experienced great views of the Paris downtown and the Eiffel Tower, and even our hotel. There were displays about the meaning of the Monument. It was commissioned by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1806 to honor the French army after the Battle of Austerlitz. It’s construction lasted from 1806 to 1836, encompassing the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars.
When we left the monument we walked just a couple blocks to a little cafe where our Monet tour was to pick us up. We had an hour and a half until pickup, so we had a nice leisurely lunch at the Flame Café. The ceilings were covered with silk flowers and it was quite quaint. From my seat next to the window I had a great view of an extremely handsome Frenchman sitting with 2 other young men at a little table on the sidewalk outside our window. My daughter and granddaughter shared a pizza, I got french onion soup (just couldn’t get enough of it) and my glass of red wine of course.
The tour van showed up on the street outside the cafe exactly at 2 p.m. on time and eight of us boarded. We sat on the back row. Our tour guide was a very attractive young lady from the south of France. She had us all introduce ourselves and where we were from. One lady was in a wheelchair and she and her friend were from Tampa, FL and the other three were a family from Minnesota who were headed to Spain later in the week.
Our tour guide drove us the hour to Giverny where Monet (1840-1926) lived, painted, raised his family (8 children) and died in 1926 (at the age of 86). The town of Giverny is tiny with the narrowest streets I’ve ever seen – only 300 residents (and thousands of tourists every year). I don’t know how the van got around those tight corners. Our tour guide took us first to the church Monet attended and to his family plots behind the picturesque old church. She gave us some background history and had a book of photos. She drove us to the parking lot of the house and gardens and let us out saying meet you back here at 4:45 which was great, because keeping a group together is too difficult down the narrow paths in the garden. Some of the bus tour groups tried to stay together with their tour guy yelling through a megaphone which was annoying.
The garden was magnificent and lush with flowers packed together randomly on either side of the paths and around the ponds that wound through the garden. Monet had said “my garden is my most beautiful work of art”. The famous green wooden bridge was of course there and we got a nice man to take our photo together. We kept trying to identify the flowers – many we were familiar with and others no idea. Luckily my daughter has an app on her phone to identify the ones we weren’t sure of. After touring the garden we went through Monet’s house. It was charming and cozy. A farm house that you can imagine living in. It was packed with paintings on every wall but not Monet’s paintings, but of his contemporaries. What an incredible collection! We wound through narrow hallways and upstairs to the bedrooms. Many of the windows were open and I saw no flying bugs at all. The beds in the bedrooms seemed so small compared to all the queen & king size beds we are use to today. The kitchen is a show stopper with its blue and white tiled walls, yellow furniture and copper pots – so inviting. We all gathered waiting afterwards and had homemade ice cream from a vendor in the a parking lot before leaving.
When we returned to Paris we took our usual nap in the hotel room. My daughter and I walked around the corner down the main street and found a little sidewalk cafe that served the best crepes. The owner was so nice to us he wrote with icing on our black plates — Paris with hearts and gave us free desserts.
Next Time: The Cinema Museum
