Giverny June 15, 2012
Hey guys, sorry for the delay in posts! The good news is that the reason for my delay is that I had way too much to do and couldn’t keep up with posts, so you’ll be seeing a lot in the next coming week :D. So around the second week of June, my parents, Luci, and Adam came to Paris to visit, which was great. Having been alone for the last 3 weeks roughly was already taking a toll on me a bit in the sense that I missed being around people that I knew, so it was great seeing my family. We did a lot around Paris the next few days, and I will post pictures about that next, but this post is only about our first day’s trip to Giverny - a town where Monet lived about 45 minutes away from Paris (by train).
As you can see from the first picture, we took a train to Giverny, which was really great. I wish that I could get everywhere because it’s so comfortable in the sense that you don’t have to go to the station 2 hours before, check in your bags, wait in the security line, etc. (granted, this was a domestic train ride of course) as well as the fact that it is super smooth and a lot more spacious than an airplane. Anyways, the train ride was short and we got to Giverny pretty quickly. Giverny itself is a tiny, tiny town, which seems to be comprised of tourists mostly; however it’s still very pretty and calm, thankfully. The town is so small, in fact, that practically everybody that is there is there to see Monet’s house and garden.
Monet’s house and garden was very beautiful! I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many flowers, not to mention so many bizarre flowers. The amount of work that it must take to maintain such a garden is incredible - every single bush is perfect! And this is not one of those “replant-able” gardens where you can just take out the dead small flowers and put in new ones, this one is real, haha. Behind the flower garden is a more typical “backyard,” where there is a nice little trail in an artificial greenbelt-esque yard (I’m so eloquent, I know). This was also incredibly beautiful - there was a little creek running along the trail as well as a lot of nice trees and plants giving you shade. The main attraction of this park was the famous pond - everybody knows it, the lilly pad pond with the little bridge, all of which comprise one of Monet’s most popular paintings. You could say that that was one of the highlights of the tour - it was very historic and beautiful, not to mention being extremely meaningful.
Anyways, after the garden, we went inside Monet’s house, which was just as interesting as the garden. What struck me the most was the fact that he had the house FILLED with old japanese paintings (of the style similar to the famous ocean wave painting), and I mean FILLED. Every room in there had it’s own little theme and was very nicely decorated (even a yellow dining room! where everything was yellow!). Another great part of the house was his first studio, where he painted a lot of his famous works (and there was even a picture of himself inside the studio in which we stood). The whole trip was really great and worthwhile - if you ever find yourself with an extra day in Paris (they’re pretty hard to find, considering how much there is to do here…), I would recommend going!
Okay, that’s enough for the first post, I need to rest my hands for the coming posts! I have about 600 pictures to look through… Yay! :-P
