Tuesday 26th June–Giverny & Versailles

Last night was another night of minimal sleep due to main light being turned on multiple times and people drinking below our window until 4am. Oh well, up nice and early anyway… so much so that the hostel breakfast hadn’t opened yet and we needed to grab chocolate croissants on the way to the metro (this was tough). We walked through the rain to our meeting point with minimal dramas and soon had cups of steaming hot coffee to warm us up.

Today we had booked a full day tour of Giverny and Versailles, our one time in one of the big touristy bus full of people of all ages. They are not ideal but they suited our purpose for today… the reclining seats and comfy chairs meant lots of sleep on the bus happened between stops and we didn’t have to worry about getting to and from places at all.

The trip started with an hour and a bit bus ride in which we all slept, even through the heavily french accented lady’s commentary about Monet’s house and gardens (she was a bit tough to listen to and I failed at my multiple attempts). The view outside the window was minimal due to the bad weather again – to give you an idea, we could only see half of the Eiffel tower due to fog. As such we were in a bit low spirits but soon we were at our first stop.

Monet’s garden and house at Giverny lifted my spirits a lot. I am such a flower person are there are 100,000 of them there! So many pretty colours and different flower types (I can only imagine what it would look like with shining sun). It was also amazing to see the place where Monet spent half his life and the gardens that inspired his most famous works. It took us about an hour to wander around the garden and through the small house… this really gave us a taste of French Provincial life. It was nice to get away from the city and the huge crowds if only for a little bit – there were many comments about how easy it would be to live there.

    

We had a whole two hours at Giverny so ended up spending the rest of it in a little cafe eating Blackberry pie inside. The rain had pretty much stopped by now… it was still overcast but we will take what we can get! Most of us were back at the bus in time, excepting two people who we waited for for half an hour and then left without them! No idea what ended up happening there.

From Giverny it was a quick 15 minute drive to our lunch spot, an old water mill. Lunch was the typical mass produced tourist meal… there was a pate that no one really ate, chicken and potato as a main and an apple pie for dessert. Nothing amazing but edible none the less. There were also two bottles of wine on the table which hardly anyone was drinking – Julie and I drank what we could (how can you leave free wine?) but gave up after about three glasses each! This led to some rather amusing mid day conversations whilst waiting for the bus to leave again.

    

Next, another one hour trip with more sleep. At around 3pm we arrived at Versailles. My first impressions were how big the palace was and how many people there were. The place was absolutely crawling with tourists and even our ‘reserved entry’ took about 15 minutes to get organised. Eventually we got in and managed to side with the less accented younger guide who turned out to be very interesting. She took us through 17 out of the 2000 rooms in the palace. Most of the furniture had been previously sold so it was mostly empty rooms, excepting a few beds. Despite this the rooms are certainly impressive, covered with gold and art. Our guide gave us some good insight into the French court and some royal history… it was also very impressive to be standing in the Hall of Mirrors where the peace declaration at the end of WWI was signed.

One thing I have to note is that the amount of tourists did take away from the experience a little – some doorways we were literally packed liked sardines with people pushing at every side. As a result, we spent more time in the less impressive rooms, purely because we couldn’t handle being in the really pretty ones. After about an hour we were free and out in the open again, giving us about half and hour in the gardens. We wandered around the back of the palace, thinking we could see sufficient amounts from there….and then we saw a map. The gardens are HUGE. I understand why people recommend a full day trip here because it would take hours upon hours to get around the gardens properly. Added to the next time list!

Eventually it was time to go home – after another 40 minute bus drive we arrived back in Paris at 6pm. This was dinner time for Julie and I so we headed to Montmarte to stroll around its cobbled streets and find somewhere to eat. We eventually settled for a place filled with locals, drank Bordeaux wine and ate Beef Burgandy (I could attempt to spell the French version of this but I would fail). There was also lots of people watching – it amused us how many locals were walking around with handfuls of baguettes. I ordered a creme caramel for dessert, which was actually a little burnt and rather disappointing – first dessert I haven’t finished here!

Then back to the hotel to pack properly for our flight tomorrow. I enjoyed putting my jeans and jumpers right down the bottom… I certainly won’t be needing them in Spain anymore! Bring on the sun!