Giverny II

Monet’s studio is the souvenir shop, also. Massive prints of a selection of paintings are on the walls, probably close to the original size. It’s a tempting place, I warn you. There, Mary and I got separated again. It was getting to be a familiar problem. I went out the exit and waited because we now had a rule that the first one out would wait for the other. I waited a very very long time, sitting under an arbor on a shady bench watching others come and go, but not Mary.

Forty minutes later she finally came out. I greeted her happily, proud of having followed our plan. No. She had been waiting inside the exit, not outside, and was miffed. Sigh.

We walked down the road to a small outside café where tables were set up in front of a house. We were the only customers for quite awhile, and kept motioning to other tourists walking the street to come on up. Some did, and by the time we were finishing our paninis, the tables were mostly full. This was the only time in France we were ever rushed out of our seats! It’s true. After all we had done to bring in more customers, too.

We spent some time walking through the town, looking in the galleries lining Giverny’s narrow main street. Some were good; some weren’t. The houses, though, are all lovely and some are for sale!

Monet and his family are buried in the church graveyard on a hill. On one beautiful tombstone, a man wrote a love letter to his wife who died at 47. Mary asked me to translate it, which was hard to do through the tears.

I mentioned the tour buses in the parking lot. On the main street at the ice cream wagon, we heard an Englishman and his wife shouting at the bewildered vendor, desperate to get directions back to their bus. It’s a fact, isn’t it, that if someone doesn’t understand what you’re saying, all you have to do is say it louder?

We helped out by telling them, “Straight on and then left and under the pass.”

Sounds easy, but when we tried to follow our own directions, we discovered it wasn’t. It had to be left on a particular street, then right a block or so, then under the pass. I assume the English couple made it to their bus since we saw no more of them. Or maybe they are still wandering around Giverny.

It looked as if we wouldn’t even get on the train back to Paris, the line for second class was so long and pushy. Suddenly the German man holding open the 2^nd class door saw that no-one was getting on in 1^st class, so he gave up his post, pushed by us knocking us out of line, and ran off. We had no choice but to follow him to 1^st and find two spacious, comfortable seats. At each stop where someone entered the 1^st class car, I expected to be asked to leave but it never happened. I finally realized that most of the newcomers were just like us, interlopers in paradise.