Giverny, Mussee D'Orsay, & Moulin Rouge

Giverny
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This morning we headed to Monet’s home, Giverny – it was a brief 45 minute drive from Paris – for those of you that have seen the famous Monet garden paintings – we can tell you that the inspiration for the paintings were definitely the gardens and Japanese water gardens. To say they were beautiful would be an understatement. Imagine the perfect group of flowers together surrounded by a pond with lily pads and a row boat with a person cleaning the pond – I’m hopeful that one of the attached pictures conveys in a small way this beauty. Sally & I believe Monet was more then just a painter – he must have been a lover of beautiful gardens – we learned that he was influenced by a trip he took to Japan – where he picked up many prints of the Japanese Baths and gardens.

D'Orsay Museum
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The town of Giverny is an Artist town.- we walked through the village and visited several art galleries – it was interesting that there was a studio of Claude Cambour – his paintings are similar to our favorite artist Claude Cambier. We also visited the American impressionist museum – they were the American artists that painted in the impressionist style.

On the way back to Paris – Sally & I decided to be dropped at the museum D’Orsay which is the old train station – it is here that all of the impressionist painters are displayed – it is interesting that these are national museums and therefore are owned by the people of France – you are not allowed to take flash pictures – however you are allowed to take pictures without flash – you’ll see we attached some pictures of the original painting we enjoyed. By now, we were getting a little hungry so upon exiting the museum we walked down a cozy little street and found a very small café where we shared a ham & cheese baguette. Now, we were ready to do what we do best in Paris – walk or stroll to do people watching. We headed down the Avenue du St. Germaine for probably 1 mile – this is the area of the high end shops. It was interesting I saw a gentlemen drive his 911 Porsche and pulled onto the curb … ran out quickly and picked up his daily paper from the corner newspaper stand – the part that made this very interesting was I believed him to be 80-85 – with the heart of a 30 year old.

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Then back to the Metro – I believe we mastered them to head back to the hotel. We had a brief break then a quick shower because tonight we had to “dress up” as we had tickets for dinner and show at the Moulin Rouge. Within the group of 47 there were 9 of us headed to the show. The show is something you do once – it was an event!

Another great day in Paris …