Giverny

Sunday (Sept. 26), we finished our impressionism tour with Claude Monet’s house in Giverny.  It’s the place with the famous Japanese water garden where he painted the Nymphéas (Water Lilies) and the bridge.  It’s really beautiful, but it’s become such a tourist attraction that it’s hard to imagine him actually living and working there.

An interesting thing about the house, though, is that it is filled with his collection of Japanese prints.  My art history major friends told me that impressionist painters were really inspired by these prints because, at the time, they were something brand new and different.  Japan’s borders had just opened, so no one had ever been exposed to Japanese art, and the impressionists loved it.

We ate a yummy lunch in town, and then left in the early afternoon for the hour and a half bus ride to PARIS!

On the bus ride, I was kind of zoned out on my iPod, but at one point, we went into a tunnel and then came out on the other side in Paris.  We drove right down the Champs-Élysées, past the Place de la Concorde, and the Louvre.  Our hotel is in the 4^th arrondissement, near the Bastille, and it has an Old Hollywood theme, so there are old American movie posters all over the place, which is kind of funny.

That night, we went to a restaurant called Royal Couscous for dinner with the group.  I was craving some sort of ethnic food, so it was perfect.  Unfortunately, it was raining, so no one really felt like walking around after dinner, so we headed back to the hotel to plan out our next few days.  We were given a list of sites in Paris to see, and there are about 20 that are obligatory.  It’s nice that we have a little bit of direction, but we’re still totally free to organize our days how we want.

Look forward to five days worth of PARIS!