My second day in Paris was the one where I woke up to realize that I'd lost a day somehow. I'd left home on Monday, and now, suddenly, it was Wednesday. Ah the marvels of modern travel and time change. Oh, so very much to do, and time tick-ticking away.
Breakfast.
The most important part of the day.
Really.
Because there is nothing more important to eat while in Paris than pastries, and the best chance to sample them without guilt is in the morning. Papa would venture out in the early AM to a Boulangerie and then we would sample them with our morning coffee, fruit, and yogurt. Ah the lovely yogurt! (Why can Yoplait make lovely fruit yogurt with real fruit and incredible creamy goodness in Paris, but only makes artificial crap full of stabilizers here in the states?)
Fueled by tasty goodness, Mom and I ventured out into the early morning for a brisk two mile walk to the tour bus. The plan was to take a full day tour to Giverny and Versailles while my jet lagged body caught up with my buzzing brain. It was a grand plan.
The drive to Giverny was marvelous. The morning was foggy and overcast, but the bright yellow fields of rapeseed glowed the same yellow as Monet's dinning room. The only difficult part of the hour and twenty minute ride was not being able to get out and look at things. Oh what I would have given for a private driver so we could have stopped to look at the ancient villages, crumbling castles, and enchanting rooms and homes built into the limestone cliffs. Our guide (who was absolutely wonderful) called the cliff dwellings Troglodyte caves, and we passed one cliffside which sported the ruins of a Norman tower at the top, with an intact castle beneath and village cottages snugged up against the castle walls. We could see how some of the lower castle chambers were worked deep into the cliffside. We were told that the castle had been taken over by the Nazis in World War II, so they could keep control over the entire valley.
And then, there we were, at Giverny, the home of Claude Monet for the end part of his life. This is the view from Monet's bedroom window.
The gardens were lovely. The beds of tulips, pansies, fritillaria, and other bedding plants were organized in masses of blues, purples, reds, and yellows. There were warm colored beds, and cool colored beds.
Across the road from the house is the lily pond, or Japanese gardens, Monet built. As we walked around the pond, the mist burned off to be replaced by brilliant sunshine.
My mom and I were able to see the light change, just as Monet watched had. Oh it was magic!
I think vacation photography could be used as a sort of personality test. I took more than 600 photos on my trip to Paris, and as I sorted through them after I'd returned home, I realized a trend in my photography.
The vast majority of my photos were of details that appealed to me.
And while I spent 15 minutes trying to photograph this bumble bee in Monet's garden, I totally overlooked the chance to take a photo of the front of the house at Giverny. Likewise I didn't take wide shot photos of the any of the museums I visited; not Versailles or the Louvre or the Orsay.
After a couple of hours at Giverny, we were driven to Moulin de Fourges, about twenty minutes away, for a catered lunch. Then it was on to Versailles. Instead of going via the freeway, our amazingly talented bus driver Stephan took us on back roads through tiny villages. The twisting single lane roads were so tight that he had to pull in the mirror on the bus to make the turns between buildings. Again I wished we could have stopped and explored.
Ah Versailles, a palace built to intimidate and rule. I have to confess, between you and I, that I would have preferred to explore any of the intimate little towns we passed to the blinding expanses of Versailles. Am I a heathen? Ya, probably.
The riches, the wealth, the mass and grandeur of Versailles can't be argued with, but with all the statuary, the gilt, the amazing paintings, the Hall of Mirrors.. what was my favorite part?
The door knobs. I loved the details on the doornobs from the Hall of Mirrors out into the gardens.
What did I want to see, but couldn't?
Not the huge, sprawling gardens with their immense scale (we didn't have the time to even walk down into the gardens proper).
I wanted to see the kitchens (which are not open to view at all).
I wished we could have toured the dark, nasty bits like the kitchens and the rooms where servants slept. When you tour Versailles, and other former palaces like the Louvre, you see the grand spaces that were for show, but not the rooms where real people lived.
Then, with sacrilegious thought tumbling around in my brain, we trundled back onto the bus and returned to Paris.
These technicolor treats are french macaroons. They are meringue like cookies sandwiched with flavored creams, with no coconut in sight. This particular batch was (left to right) chocolate, pistachio, raspberry, and coffee. Many bakeries sell these lovely treats, and they vary in size from the size of quarters to this size that is nearly three inches across. The Patisserie de la Tour Eiffel (where these were made) was my favorite spot to buy them. The flavors of the fillings were frisky and bold, and absolutely divine. (The lemon, coffee, pistachio, and caramel ones were my favorites!)
For dinner that night I had a lovely tagine with lamb, artichoke, and preserved citron on a couscous bed. Oh, yum! Oh, and to go with my dinner I had the best mint tea. It was sweet, hot mint tea served with pine nuts. The pine nuts were layered with fresh mint in my glass, and the hot tea was poured over the top so the hot drink was nutty and oh so good! For dessert I had a scoop of coconut ice cream which was more coconut than cream, very tasty. My mom had a sabayon over fruit which had been browned in a broiler until the custard took on the color and taste of a perfectly toasted homemade marshmallow. Oh, de-lish, and something neither of us had ever seen or heard of.
A note here about the people of Paris. I speak next to no French. The vast majority of my approximately 60 words of French are food related (thank you Julia Child!). I was completely impressed with the patience, good humor, and generosity of the people of Paris when dealing with us. My favorite part of this meal was the waiter, who had great fun teasing us about our table's collective food knowledge. "You know sabayon? Pah!" followed by a huge teasing grin.