A Fork And A Suitcase

Part 3 of my Giverny visit. Finally!  After years of anticipating, looking at photos online, and planning, I have entered the beautiful grounds of Claude Monet's home and gardens.  The property is divided into two sections: Le Clos Normand is the part with the house and the beautiful garden and the Japanese inspired water garden on the other side of the road. Claude Monet lived in Giverny from 1883 until he died in 1926.  When Monet and his family settled in Giverny in 1883, this area was an orchard enclosed by high stone walls.  Monet cleared out the area (about 2.5 acres), and created a spectacular garden.  He did not care for order, or very dark colors, he grouped flowers by color and blended simple flowers with the rarest of species, mixed annuals and perennials.  Tall iron arches are the centerpieces creating a beautiful path to the house. There are fruit trees, ornamental trees, climbing roses, long-stemmed hollyhocks, multicolored annuals, and...

This will be at least a four-part post on visiting the stunning estate of Claude Monet.  This post will contain a lot of different information on visiting the area. Visiting Giverny has been on my wish list for a long time, but I have been wary of the  huge crowds that make the daily pilgrimage to Monet's gardens and home.  In order to have a bit of peace and hopefully the ability of taking photos of flowers minus the hundreds of tourists next to them, I decided to stay in the area overnight and visit the property after 3pm, when most of the visitors would be starting to make their way back to Paris. There are plenty of tour companies offering day trips to Giverny, which is a great option for those who want a zero hassle trip of being picked up from and delivered back to their hotel in Paris. We opted for a trip completely on our own, which is really easy.  I purchased our train tickets on Raileurope.com and printed them out at home.  We got t...

Going to a produce market is one of my favorite activities while on vacation and a market in France quadruples my excitement. We got lucky to be visiting Annecy on one of its three weekly market days, Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. Although it was ending, we were still able to enjoy sampling, ogling and buying.  Each time I see ready to plant vegetables like these I get ideas of having my own garden, those ideas dissipate fairly fast upon returning home.     This watermelon just begs to be picked up and bitten into. Completely starving after seeing all these delicacies, we were ready for lunch. We walked by this place, it was crowded (I took this photo after lunch) and we liked what was on the menu. We had the tomie cheese from the Abbey, onions, bacon and potatoes, it was really delicious. These were potato fritters. O Savoyard 1 rue Perriere This was a ...