An Amazing Day at Giverny (Wednesday)

So I know you all got to get dressed up on Wednesday, and I know there was the awesome neighborhood party and fun trick-or-treating in Heatherstone, and the Harvest Party at Westgate Chapel, and Trunk or Treating at The Church at MCA.  That all sounds great, and yes the kids were sad to miss it, but we spent our decidedly un-Halloween-ish October 31st at Monet's house in Giverny, where there was not a pumpkin in sight.  And. It. Was. Spectacular.

This was the first time there for all of us; it isn't somewhere Scott and I went when we were in Paris last time, nor did I do it when I was here by myself.  It was actually Nicole and Josie's idea.  We spent the 6 weeks before we left on our trip doing a unit study on France (history, culture, language, art) and we did a lot on the Impressionists.  One book we read was about a girl named Linnea who gets to take a trip to Paris and go to Giverny.  The girls really, really wanted us to go during out trip, too!

Waiting for the Metro - these guys are getting really good at this whole train thing!

Giverny

 

Giverny is just outside the modern-day town of Vernon, which is the closest train station.  We started the day with another train ride of about 45 minutes or so.  This time, however, it was not on either the Metro, or the RER commuter trains, but rather on an actual SNCF (national railways) train.  For this one we had to pre-buy tickets for a particular timed trains (on this line they run about 90 minutes to 2 hours.  For both the Metro and the RER you just show up and hop on one as they run continuously).  Just outside the Vernon train station there is a line of charter buses that wait for every arriving train and take you out to Giverny.

Once you arrive in Giverny you walk through several streets to get to Monet's house itself.  The town itself was so quaint and cute; it was like something out of movie.

A little soap shop in the town, nearly across the street from Monet's house, has a bubble machine going, which was a huge hit with the kids

 

The House

 

It is amazing to me that, after Monet's death, then that of his adult children, his home and gardens fell into total disrepair for many years.  Several years and a lot of money went into restoring both so that now they are supposedly just as in Monet's day.  Photography is not allowed inside the house, but the Fondation Claude Monet's website has beautiful photos of the inside if you are curious.

We were able to go into the house and see the studio (complete with a picture of Monet himself standing right where we were, with all the same furnishings and artwork!), as well as the kitchen and dining room.  Monet was well-known for entertaining fellow artists for dinner.  Being in the famous yellow dining room was especially cool, thinking how pretty much every other well-known impressionist and many other artists living in France over the 40+ years Monet lived at Giverny had sat around that same table discussing and debating art!  Upstairs you could walk through Monet's bedroom.  It has two large windows that open out over the garden.  Imagine waking up to this view every day - how could you help but be inspired?

The Gardens

The weather was absolutely beautiful and we enjoyed walking around the sunny gardens before heading to the pond.

The main path through the garden, which appears in so many of his paintings!

The Water Garden

 

The waterlily pond was definitely the highlight of the trip!  There is a bench placed at the far end of the pond, with a perfect view of the Japanese footbridge, just as you've seen it in so many paintings.  Sitting there, looking out over the pond you could just imagine Monet himself standing right in front of you, painting the scene over and over in different seasons and in different light.  It was very, very cool.

First view down the pond when you enter the water garden

Can I just say how excited I was to find two actual waterlilies still blooming on October 31st?!  There is a white one in the left-middle of the picture and a pink one just to the right of middle.  Yay!

Here we are on THE Japanese bridge!!!

And all of us on it!

This is the view from the bench, across the pond to the Japanese bridge

The girls were really excited to see it in person!  and I love, love, love Max's smile here!

And again I love, love, love Max popping out to say hi and smile in this one!

 Lastly, over on the other side of the bridge and the little floodgate that lets water into or stops water from entering the ponds we found the green boat, also seen in many paintings!

All in all it was an afternoon very well spent.  This is now on my list of must-see places for friends heading to Paris!

A Quick Refueling Stop on the Way Home

 

The train station where we caught the SNCF train out to Giverny happens to be at the top of a shopping mall.  Weird, huh?  Well when we came back into the station and headed down the escalator towards the Metro stops at the bottom of the mall what did we see but another Starbucks.  Snack, anyone?  Yes please!

Now remember that it was Halloween.  And Starbucks is of course an American company.  And the folks that work there, bless their little hearts, did their best to make it Halloween-ish.  The had a couple orange and black balloons taped up in a corner, a giant fake hairy spider on the front of the cash register, and a string of the weird black fake spiderweb stuff stretched across the front of the counter.  So far so good.  Then they had this:

It was a little smaller than a volleyball and I'm not sure what it was, exactly, but I know it was not a pumpkin.  We were joking that I guess in France you decorate anything you can find that orange and vague-ly roundish.  Then we walked over to the other side of the counter where you wait for your drinks and saw this cultural travesty:

Yes, yes, those are oranges.  Facepalm.  Toto, I don't think we're in American anymore.

On the plus side, they did give the girls candy and they didn't even have to say Trick or Treat.

Yes, Josie does look sad because Nicole had just told her that her candy bag was cola-flavored, but have no fear, we decreed that they had to share the other, fruity-flavored one, so her smile quickly returned.  :)