Monet's house and Louis XIV's palace

Again we hit the grocery store for breakfast and can you see why Garth is so tempted by the pastries? Of course they had to be part of our breakfast along with some croissants, cheese and good juice today. We packed up our food and decided to head just a few minutes to Giverny and find a nice place to eat. Anita was right Giverny is a beautiful place and we found a great little spot for our meal.
We just had one unwelcome visitor that absolutely wouldn't leave us alone.
Here in Giverny, Claude Monet lived for over 40 years. The house was really interesting because each room was a different color and they were very bright colors of blue, green and yellow. I asked on of the docents if they were the original colors and he said they were. It was filled with Japanese artwork and photographs of Monet in his home with the same paintings hanging on the walls.

Most of Monet's really famous paintings are of the gardens and landscapes here and the actual landscapes and gardens are as spectacular as his paintings. It was exciting to be in places that were so recognizable in Monet's work.
Monet had numerous huge painting of this lilly pond and the Japanese bridge in the background. If you are a Monet fan you can almost see some of his paintings in these next few pictures.


We sat in the gardens for quite awhile and I have about 100 pictures from different spots but I won't make you look at them all. I forgot to add the picture of the boat that he painted so much and without redoing all the pictures of this blog, I can't add it. I guess you will have to come and look at all my pictures when I get home if you want to see it. This is an action shot of Preston and Jip, not much action though.

From Giverny we headed to Paris with a stop just outside at Versailles. This huge summer palace was built by Louis the XIV and every inch of it is excess, from the extravagant gates and courtyard that lead to it, to the ornately decorated rooms, furniture and ceilings, to the expansive gardens in the back. Here we are just entering the first set of gates and you can see how far away the palace still is. It was the hottest day we had had in Europe and the lines to get in were so long and in the sun! Because it was late in the day by the time we got to the ticket booth, the tickets were half price. At least that was some consolation after waiting all that time.Here Preston and Garth are standing facing the palace with the main gate and courtyard behind them. In this picture you would think that there was no one but us at Versailles but you couldn't be more wrong! There were tons of people and the most rude ones were the Japanese. I had forgotten how rude they can be, but after being pushed by their undisciplined children and even the adults, it all came back to me.
Just one of the many elaborate ceilings in the palace.

This was the room Preston had been waiting to see. Can you guess the name? If you guessed the Hall of Mirrors you are right. It was here that the treaty for WWI was signed.
This is a statue to Napoleon and behind it is the famous painting of Napoleon crowning Josephine as empress.
This is the back view of Versailles at the first level of fountains and gardens.
Here you can see Versailles way in the background and we are just at the end of the first grass path on the second level of gardens.
This was as far as we could walk today because it was just too hot and too far. There were golf carts that you could rent to get around the gardens but we didn't ever see where. That would be the only way you could possibly see all of the gardens. As you look behind Garth there is an emince amount of water and the water goes in a cross cutting through the trees. Louis XIV used to bring full sailing ships into the water here and watch battles each other.

This shot is looking out at the gardens from the first level where Preston was standing a couple of pictures ago.
One last shot of the backside of Versailles. After Preston had walked through Louis' bedroom he said he would have started a revolution too if he had seen the king's bedroom and the waste of money it was. It really is something beyond any one's imagination at the scale and ornamentation of the place. Louis almost bankrupted the country by building it. It was used for 200 years and then during the French Revolution it was ransacked.
From Versailles we headed to our hotel room which was on the other side of Paris towards Euro Disney. Anita had told us that the rooms were newer, nicer and cheaper over there and it was easy to get into Paris because there was a fast train. I had booked the room and had know idea if this would be the case of our room. When we set the navigation system in Anita's car it told us it should take us 26 minutes to get there. I guess the system wasn't considering the amount of traffic around Paris. Over an hour later we finally arrived at our hotel and it was in a dumpy area but at least the rooms were nice and clean and the staff was very friendly.

Since it was still a little early (10:00) we decided to head to Euro Disney and watch the fireworks that go off at 11;00 and get a treat. We ended up at the Disney Village and had an ice cream and waited for the fireworks.
It was really weird to be in Euro Disney were it is just like Disneyland and Disney World and we had just been at Giverny and Versailles earlier in the day. Disney is Disney and just the same no matter where you go in the world. The fireworks didn't end up going off until 11:30 and by the time we got back to the hotel it was late and we had a big day tomorrow, Paris!
We were trying to figure out the best night setting for our camera, obviously we didn't find it. Scott, where are you when we need you?!