SP:
Unlike yesterday, today is tour day. We're once again hopping on a Viatour, only this time we're heading to Giverny and Versailles. Since this is a ten hour tour, Anna and I are once again forced to wake-up at the crack to dawn. Ok, not really... but when happy Algerians are honking their horns all night celebrating a tie, 6 am looks like butt-crack of dawn. The cold rain currently pouring from the skies is not improving our mood.
Having mastered the Paris Metro, Anna and I make it over to the tour office in no time. We're over an hour early, but we're there. As we sit and wait for our bus to arrive, we notice an Australian couple from our Lourve tour tearing past the office like they've got Hellhounds, or maybe rabid kangaroos, on their tails. We're astounded to see people we know in a city the size of Paris, but shrug it off. Ten minutes later, our chariot/bus arrives and we board. Immediately, we're greeted by a chorus of "Hey mates! Weren't you on our last tour?" It's our Aussie friends (the running ones)! Turns out, they're on this tour too!
Once everyone is on board, the main tour guide introduces himself. Jean-Louis reminds Anna of Martin Short's character from Father of the Bride. He reminds me of one of those snobby footmen one always sees in movies. Or Percy, the dog from Disney's Pocahontas. Yeah... that's what he reminds me of! Anyway, Jean-Louis introduces us to our driver (Jean-Luc) and our other tour guide (Maria). Jean-Louis immediately begins prattling about Paris, Giverny, Monet, and history. To be honest, this is what I think he prattled about. I fell asleep and didn't wake up until we pulled into the quaint little town that houses Monet's garden.
Giverny looks like one of those places where American movie heroines move to "find themselves" and connect with "real" people (aka snog French men). It's tiny, quiet, and quite picturesque. Jean-Louis prceeds to ruin this atmosphere by setting out at a run, and challenging us to make it to the finish line (Monet's garden) within ten minutes of him. Many do not. Another thing is Jean-Louis constantly repeats his directions back to the bus. You know that song "Over the river and though the woods?" He's a lot like that. Every ten seconds he'd repeat his meandering instructions on how to get back to the bus and always insert "To the parking lot" at a minimum of twenty times. Despite all of this (maybe because of it?), Anna and I are still amazed when tourist continue to ask "Where do we meet?" and "How do we get there?"
Monet's garden is beautiful. It's not well structured, but the flowers are bright and create a profusion of colors. Actually, it looks exactly like an Impressionist painting. In the middle of this serenity, a Southerner belts at her daughter (whose across the water lily pond) "Hey, HEY! Stop! I wanna... I WANNA TAKE A PICTURE! There! No, back-up! BACK UP! No! I want the reflection!" Good lord, I thought Southerners were supposed to understand the concepts of genteel and appropriate behavior. Guess not.
Anna and I walk around the garden and Monet's house before heading to a poppy field (Canada's symbol for Armistice Day), where inspiration strikes. Out comes my Flip camera and out comes the iPhone. As I film the field, I play "Waltz of the Flowers"on my iPhone. It's beautiful. It's musical. It's nerdy.
After getting back on the bus (in the parking lot!), we're told that we are heading to lunch at a restuarant that used to be an 18th century mill. To Anna's endless delight, we were served poached salmon and chicken. Yes, there were some mashed potatoes, but those were few and far between. I liked the chicken. And the wine. And our dining party (the Aussies, another Aussie couple, an American couple, and two Spanish ladies). We had a great time swapping stories. The highlight, though, was once again brought to us by the Southern lady. While waiting in line with her teenage daughter for the bathroom, she practically tackles a good-looking waiter, and forces him to pose for a picture with her daughter. Said daughter is mortified. After Momma leaves, the rest of the ladies in line reassure the cringing girl that yes, it's embarassing now but in two days, that will be her most cherished photo of the trip. She looked a little brighter after that.
AW:
So the next stop was Versailles... I now totally understand why the royalty was depised and basically lynched. The place is ridiculous and not really in the good way. Pretty and opulent yes, but WAY overboard and WAY too much gold for my taste. Think Rococo on crack and E times 1000. That about explains Versailles... But, I get ahead of myself. Once we arrived in the parking lot at Versailles our first view was amazing, a huge parking lot with tons of policemen descending upon us... crap, I thought I hid that bridge from Giverny pretty well... oh well, I'm sure Mom and Dad are going to love this call...what, they ran past me? What? Oh, they're only arresting the immigrant selling Eiffel Toweres while his comrades run away laughing hysterically... Phew, for a moment there I thought I was going to have to give the bridge back... in addition to some jail time.
Okay, once we walked through the throngs of police arresting the ONE unarmed person (unless you count mini Eiffel Towers as weapons), we got to split our tour group into 2 since we had so many people. We luckily (maybe, but will explain soon) ended up with the other tour guide, Maria (we're pretty sure that was her name anyways) and not the Martin Short from Father of the Bride. So I basically already explained Verasilles, Rococo, gold, opulence, pictures of Louis XIV, pictures of Louis XIV, pictures of Louis XIV, pictures of Louis XIV, pictures of Louis XIV, pictures of Louis XIV, pictures of Louis XIV, Rococo, gold, Rococo, gold, pictures of Louis XIV, pictures of Louis XIV, pictures of Louis XIV, you get the idea... As we walked through the many, but small and very crowded rooms, our entire group kept having problems with the tour guide. The woman is a very skilled wizard. She can APPARATE!!!! Really!!! Literally, one moment she is right next to you and not even 2 seconds later she is two rooms away waving her umbrella at us. It wasn't just us not paying attention to where she was going, everyone is the group noted her wizardy ways. She seriously could move three rooms over in the matter of a second or two while the rest of us had to throw elbows to get two steps in front of us.
On a quick side note; I thought the French were suppose to be stylish. What was with all of the men taking their hair cues from Louis XIV? That hairstyle was so centuries ago... Really, we saw multiple guys with the Louis the XIV hair-do. And no, we didn't want to break our cameras so no photos were taken.
Back to our normally scheduled program: the gardens at Versailles. Gorgeous, huge, live music playing. These gardens steched out for kilometers (their word, not mine...) but we only had 30 minutes so we didn't get to see much, but what we did was amazing. After our quick your of the garden we headed back to the bus for our journey home.
We tried to find a French place for dinner that wouldn't bankrupt us and had something Anna would eat (so shoot me, I'm picky and meat makes me gag, especially uncooked, jiggly, or jello-y, as the French seem to prefer it, mmm... appetizing). However, as the majority of you know, Anna won't eat anything coming from an animal (this doesn't include eggs or God's gift to us: cheese), so that severely restricted what we could eat. We finally gave up on French cuisine (since we were also stuck in the middle of a torrential downpour) and headed to our favorite French restaurant only to find it wasn't open. I have no idea where we ate dinner and we went home early since it was going to be a very early morning.
Unlike yesterday, today is tour day. We're once again hopping on a Viatour, only this time we're heading to Giverny and Versailles. Since this is a ten hour tour, Anna and I are once again forced to wake-up at the crack to dawn. Ok, not really... but when happy Algerians are honking their horns all night celebrating a tie, 6 am looks like butt-crack of dawn. The cold rain currently pouring from the skies is not improving our mood.
Having mastered the Paris Metro, Anna and I make it over to the tour office in no time. We're over an hour early, but we're there. As we sit and wait for our bus to arrive, we notice an Australian couple from our Lourve tour tearing past the office like they've got Hellhounds, or maybe rabid kangaroos, on their tails. We're astounded to see people we know in a city the size of Paris, but shrug it off. Ten minutes later, our chariot/bus arrives and we board. Immediately, we're greeted by a chorus of "Hey mates! Weren't you on our last tour?" It's our Aussie friends (the running ones)! Turns out, they're on this tour too!
Giverny looks like one of those places where American movie heroines move to "find themselves" and connect with "real" people (aka snog French men). It's tiny, quiet, and quite picturesque. Jean-Louis prceeds to ruin this atmosphere by setting out at a run, and challenging us to make it to the finish line (Monet's garden) within ten minutes of him. Many do not. Another thing is Jean-Louis constantly repeats his directions back to the bus. You know that song "Over the river and though the woods?" He's a lot like that. Every ten seconds he'd repeat his meandering instructions on how to get back to the bus and always insert "To the parking lot" at a minimum of twenty times. Despite all of this (maybe because of it?), Anna and I are still amazed when tourist continue to ask "Where do we meet?" and "How do we get there?"
Anna and I walk around the garden and Monet's house before heading to a poppy field (Canada's symbol for Armistice Day), where inspiration strikes. Out comes my Flip camera and out comes the iPhone. As I film the field, I play "Waltz of the Flowers"on my iPhone. It's beautiful. It's musical. It's nerdy.
AW:
So the next stop was Versailles... I now totally understand why the royalty was depised and basically lynched. The place is ridiculous and not really in the good way. Pretty and opulent yes, but WAY overboard and WAY too much gold for my taste. Think Rococo on crack and E times 1000. That about explains Versailles... But, I get ahead of myself. Once we arrived in the parking lot at Versailles our first view was amazing, a huge parking lot with tons of policemen descending upon us... crap, I thought I hid that bridge from Giverny pretty well... oh well, I'm sure Mom and Dad are going to love this call...what, they ran past me? What? Oh, they're only arresting the immigrant selling Eiffel Toweres while his comrades run away laughing hysterically... Phew, for a moment there I thought I was going to have to give the bridge back... in addition to some jail time.
On a quick side note; I thought the French were suppose to be stylish. What was with all of the men taking their hair cues from Louis XIV? That hairstyle was so centuries ago... Really, we saw multiple guys with the Louis the XIV hair-do. And no, we didn't want to break our cameras so no photos were taken.
We tried to find a French place for dinner that wouldn't bankrupt us and had something Anna would eat (so shoot me, I'm picky and meat makes me gag, especially uncooked, jiggly, or jello-y, as the French seem to prefer it, mmm... appetizing). However, as the majority of you know, Anna won't eat anything coming from an animal (this doesn't include eggs or God's gift to us: cheese), so that severely restricted what we could eat. We finally gave up on French cuisine (since we were also stuck in the middle of a torrential downpour) and headed to our favorite French restaurant only to find it wasn't open. I have no idea where we ate dinner and we went home early since it was going to be a very early morning.
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