Our last day in Paris, but we decided to take a side trip to Giverny, home to Monet and the place that inspired the water lilies series. We've seen so many of these paintings over the years and in different museums around the world, we were very excited about wandering through the setting that was the basis for those glorious works.

The tour itself was ok, but the headset used by our guide for the "silent vox" portion was lousy and we didn't get a lot out of her narrative.  Basically we were on our own and just took full advantage of that - wandering around the lily ponds and sumptuous garden outside the manor house.  The amount of work, and love of gardening that goes into maintaining the grounds must be staggering! 

We wrapped up the day with a visit to Sacre Cour on Montmartre.  This spectacular cathedral has a commanding view of Paris and is a popular spot with tourists as you can imagine.  Steps and lawn areas leading up to the top of the hill were full of people - tourists and vendors alike.  It was a bit annoying actually.  The number of "vendors" selling water and beer (yes, beer) from the cases they obviously bought at the store was astonishing.  Dale stated that it couldn't possibly be legal!  LOL!

At the end of the day, we were beat, and knew we had an early call to get to the train station the next morning for our journey down to Bordeaux.  We grabbed some sandwiches and snacks, headed back to the room and bunked in for the evening.

Next up:  Bordeaux!!

Again, all of the photos from our time in Paris can be found on my web site "Our Travels - Paris"