France.

So this weekend as some of you know, I took a sojourn to France with Nicki. We went to Giverny (after a slight meltdown on Nicki's part when we didn't know what to do about getting a train to Vernon, the town 2 miles away) to see Monet's garden. We walked to Giverny from Vernon, as it was a nice day, and we made it into the tiny town of 500 inhabitants (excluding the tourists). The first thing we did after checking into the B&B (the woman who ran it spoke fluent English because she was raised in Australia--convenient) was go to the garden.

It was a bit anticlimactic, really, because it wasn't in full bloom yet. But it was still really pretty, and the water lily garden was really nice because of the Japanese bridge that's in a bunch of his paintings.

We also saw Monet's grave and had wine (er, I had wine) at a restaurant/pub/hotel where Monet used to "bring his American friends." Really, that's all there was to Giverny. It was basically Monet-land.

The next day we went to Paris, which I loved. It was sad that French people are so irritable on the Metro and the stations smell like urine. But whatever. Our first stop was Notre-Dame, which was my personal favorite. We then hit the Louvre, where I saw of course the Mona Lisa, some other Da Vinci pieces, the Venus de Milo, and two Vermeers: "The Lacemaker" and "The Astronomer," the latter of which I'd seen a picture of in high school and liked at the time. That made me happy because I didn't know it was there; a nice surprise.

After that we went to the Musee Rodin, a museum with all sculptures by Rodin (including the thinker). It's too bad Nicki got really upset that she couldn't take pictures--I had gone for her and she kind of ruined it for a time. The next stop was the Eiffel Tower (gotta go there), but the line was too long and we couldn't go up because we were pressed for time. We then went to the Arc de Triomphe, concluding our monument tour.

Nicki wanted to go to L'Orangerie, the museum where Monet's water lily painting is--I was kind of mad because she asked to leave the Arc de Triomphe before I could go up to the top, which I wanted to do, and she later gave me a hard time about it because I didn't really want to go to L'Orangerie. But whatever. We ended up going, and it was CLOSED. Of course.

Instead, we sat in the Tuileries for a bit. That was until I said, "This is depressing. Let's go over there," indicating the square with an obelisk in it not too far away. Turns out that was where the executions occured during the French Revolution. So we wandered off, and on the way saw a crepe stand. Well, what is more French than crepes? Of course we got one each, mine with apricot filling. It was delicious! And then some random guy approached us with this ring of Eiffel Tower keychains, 3 for 1 euro. We each got three. He probably stole them, but whatever, cheap for us.

And that was Paris, sorry it's not more in detail. I don't feel like writing it all out and nothing really funny happened. At least I made it through the weekend.