day 2

We went to Giverny (Monet’s home) on Thursday morning with Edie and one of Edie’s friends. It was an hour or so outside of Paris , so we just enjoyed the views of the French countryside on the drive out there. Honestly, Giverny was something I really wanted to see, as I have long been a fan of Claude Monet… but Lance wasn’t too keen on the whole idea, so he was mostly going just to be sweet. However, Monet’s home and garden were far more beautiful than either of us had imagined, and Lance was as overwhelmed by it as I was. He spent the entire time we were there with our new fancy-shmancy camera glued to his face, taking pictures of all the incredible flowers.

One of my favorite parts was the Japanese footbridge and the water lily pond. Those have always been my favorites of Monet’s paintings, and it was incredible to see them in real life.

Then we ate lunch a little café near Monet’s home (we both had omelettes and frites) and then headed back into Paris. After we arrived back in the city, we headed toward Hotel des Invalides.

Since that weekend was a military holiday in France , the courtyard of the museum was blocked off, so we ended up just kind of passing through it to get to Napoleon’s tomb. The building itself is just unbelievably beautiful…

And the rotunda in which his coffin rests is just impressive all the way around.

Then we went over to the Eiffel Tower … where we wasted a good 30 minutes trying to capture my joy mid-air.

We were going to go up into the tower, but the line was just unbelievably long (had to have been at least 3 hours) because they only had one pillar of the tower open. Anyway, we ended up scratching that idea, ate dinner, and then went back to the apartment.