Sorry sorry sorry

So, since I woke up to a text from my dad that said, "MOM IS FREAKING OUT ARE YOU ALIVE" I figured today might be a good day to update. The problem is I have no idea where to start...

Last post I believe I promised some prose about the Monet gardens? Yes? Well, like everything else in Paris and surrounding areas, they're fantastic and beautiful and full of tourists. We woke up early and took an hour long train ride to Giverny where Monet built himself his little lily pad oasis and painted some of his most famous masterpieces (which, of course, we got to see the next day--more on that later). My first thought on entering the gardens and seeing the house was "Mom would go ape shit over this." Those who know my mom probably have a pretty accurate mental image of Giverny going, but for those who aren't aware of the extent of Diane Semet's obsession with flowers, here's the best I can do: FLOWERS EVERYWHERE. You can immediately see the appeal for an Impressionist painter--the colors are overwhelming, and it changes every second as the clouds move around the sun. The ponds are fascinating too, especially when you've seen some of Monet's Nymphéas murals because you realize that those paintings are more about what's reflected on the surface of the water more than anything else. Of course there are a shitload of tourists who crowd the famous Japanese bridge taking pictures (there was a camera case floating in one of the ponds), but you don't have to work too hard to imagine Monet there and to get a deeper understanding of his artwork. The next day we went to the Orangerie where the Nymphéas murals--the 22 HUGE panels Monet painted of the lily ponds at Giverny--are kept. It's about five minutes from the Louvre and, for my money, I'd pick the Orangerie over the Louvre any day. For one thing, there are way fewer tourists snapping pictures of all the paintings instead of looking at them. In addition to the Nymphéas, which were mind-blowing, we saw some of the best post-Impressionist artists' works there--Cezanne, Picasso, Matisse to give a few familiar names and Soutine and Derain to name a couple I had never heard of before.

My internet time is running down so I think I'll end this post the same way I ended the last one, with juicy tidbits of things I may or may not write about the next time I scrape together 4 euro for an hour of internet: the Catacombs, the Picasso museum, the Pompidou and a pigeon pooping on me in the Luxembourg gardens. Intriguing, no??