Back to blogging! Sorry, Mom. I was just exhausted from all of the late nights and early mornings and sensory overload that is France. I started this post in September of 2018, and now, four years later, I’ll attempt to finish it!

In case you’d forgotten, sister Sara was studying abroad in Paris in the summer of 2018, and Mama and I decided to visit for a week.

Next on the agenda was the little town of Giverny. A 45 minute train ride from Paris, Giverny is where the famous Claude Monet spent many of his years and created so many of his iconic water lily and cathedral paintings. I’d discovered the day trip when researching where Sara and I could visit on my first weekend in France, but she realized her class was already scheduled to visit before I would arrive. She loved the experience, so I knew Mama and I would, as well.

Another early morning got us to the train station around 8am to pack our bags with breakfast and snacks for the day. After a quick jaunt over, I was a bit flustered to find that the Giverny train situation was a bit reminiscent of my little Pompeii adventure of last year. That is, the main train station is in no way close to the main attractions of the city. Unlike in Pompeii, however, the folks of Vernon and Giverny capitalized on this opportunity and had tourist busses and mini trains eagerly awaiting our arrival just outside the train station. I tried to figure out another way to get to Monet’s house, but I couldn’t figure out the standard local transportation quickly enough and ended up forking over about $20 to the little mini train driver. Gah.

The train played some silly song on repeat the whole ride, but it did have some interesting narration which told us a bit about the towns of Vernon and Giverny, so I suppose it wasn’t all a bad deal. We drove past some pretty buildings from long ago…

But soon, we made it to the heart of Giverny.

Too gorgeous! Lots of rain means lots of green, I suppose.

A little walk and a short line later, and we found ourselves inside Monet’s very own garden.

The gardens are serviced daily by volunteers, students, and resident gardeners alike.

Now please prepare yourselves for some breathtaking flower photography:

The task sure is made easy when there are so many gorgeous flowers to choose from! The main flower garden is just a maze of blooms and lush greens. Makes for lots of smiles.

And then we walked around to the water lily pond. Gah! We stayed here way longer than planned. It wasn’t hard to see why Monet was so fascinated. I could easily spend hours here admiring the view. It made me want to go home and paint!

Guys, you don’t even want to know how many hundreds of pictures I have of this pond. I swear this is just a very small sampling.

And of course, we can’t forget the Japanese bridges:

Just a few more pictures here….

And some silly ones!

More flowers…

And then back to the gardens for even more flowers! Hahaha. Sorry, guys. Just tryna share the beauty.

Eventually, and reluctantly, we made our way to Monet’s house.

His private gallery was filled with many famous paintings. When he lived here, he kept his front room stocked with the pieces most special and dear to him.

The upstairs had some amazing views looking over at the neighbors and down at the gardens.

We also had some fun admiring the interior decorations of the house. I was especially a fan of the kitchen.

In the end, as we exited Monet’s house and perused the gift shop, I realized we’d actually missed our ride to get back to the train station! In planning the trip, I gave us four hours between drop off and pick up because I knew two would be too short. Seems I’d forgotten how patient my mom and I can be. But no matter! I shelled out a little extra to extend our stay yet again so that we could look around a bit more.

Honestly, I can’t remember what happened after that, but after some more trials and tribulations, I think we ended up just walking back to the train station instead of taking the tram. Along the way, we stopped to see some beautiful paintings at the Musee des Impressionnismes.

Further along our walk, we stopped in some beautiful churches and snacked on some delights from a patisserie. Yum!

Finally, forever later, we arrived back in Paris and went straight to see the Eiffel Tower again. We spent the early evening enjoying the Jardins du Trocadéro, though not as much as all the locals dipping their toes in! We also got a nice crepe to snack on.

A first for me, Mama and I decided to take a river tour along the Seine. We got up close to the Louvre and the Notre Dame Cathedral, and we had to repeatedly sit down and duck to get under the myriad shallow bridges spanning the river.

After our lovely little boat ride, we returned to see the Eiffel tower in my favorite hour – sunset!

Then we picked up Sara and had dinner with a view of Arc de Triomphe.

The waitress was very friendly and chatty, but I was exhausted! Sara and Mama had way too much energy for me after such a long day, so I was a little cranky. When we finished dinner and it started raining, the two of them wanted to be crazies and dance in the rain by the Arc. I did not partake. Ha!

Such a long, beautiful, and fun day. I was so ready for bed, though! And it was our last day in Paris before we took a little weekend trip. More to come on that later.

Bonne nuit!

-Lizzy-wa