Paris Vacation - Part 3

Want to know the best way to annoy your husband when on vacation? Make next to no plans for how to get to a place that you really want to go see and then watch him sit grumpily in Starbucks for an hour while you wait for a train (your persuasions of coffee lattes and croissants don't help much, either). Keep in mind, we had gone out with some local Frenchies the night before - so we wasted slept right through the good early morning hours. Oh well. We got there...eventually.

I desperately wanted to see Monet's home and gardens in Giverny. Here's what I knew before we left: we needed to get the main train station, we should buy a ticket to the Vernon stop and take the shuttle from there.

Also, there's not loads of trains that go to this place. I never once looked at a train schedule and had not a clue as to what any of it would cost.

I'm a fun travel companion, I swear. Instead of a "procrastinator" in the most extreme sense of the word, we'll call me "spontaneous" because I like that more.

I'm just going to post a bunch of pictures from this place. I loved it (we weren't allowed to take pictures in Claude Monet's house so sorry, no pictures from that weird/kitschy place) and could have stayed for hours (except for the hoards of school children that were there that day!).


The weather was perfect. This was my favorite day of our vacation, although I loved them all very much.

Here is just one of the groups of children that were with their school. This particular group was drawing the famous footbridge, but other classes were walking around talking about the flowers and writing things down in their notebooks.

And this is the view from the bedroom of his home:

I might start to paint, too, if I woke up to this every morning! 

After wandering around the gardens and gift shop for awhile, we went to a little cafe to sit in the sun and eat something before catching the hour long train ride back to Paris. 

We decided to go the Notre Dame that late afternoon/early evening.

It's massive!

Gorgeous stained glass windows!!!

We caught the Good Friday mass (it was an accident, but a happy one!)

These trees took my breath away...

There are two bridges in Paris that are famous for 'locking your love' to it - one is apparently for your true love, and the other for your lover. We couldn't remember which was which, so we put our lock on the one next to the Notre Dame (and does it really matter which one it's locked to?).

So many locks!!!

We found a spot for ours. Can you see it?

We decided that after dinner we would check out the Eiffel Tower so we could see it at night, and even though it felt more crowded than Disneyland in peak season (you know, bumping shoulders with people walking past, incredibly long lines that probably aren't worth it, etc.), it was the perfect way to end the day:

First view of the tower...and I took this with my phone!!

From Stian's phone....(our phone's took better pictures than the camera - we need a travel tripod!)

We didn't go up because the line was over 2 hours long, but it was enough to just look at it from ground level (for this trip, at least).

More to come...