Giverny

Today we visited Monet's home at Giverny which was absolutely beautiful. The famous water lily gardens were lovely, but the garden full of nothing but irises and the occasional trellis of clematis were breathtaking. Don't worry, I took about a million pictures of everything that came across my camera lens. His home was beautiful too, and the rooms were surprisingly large for the time in which they were built. Even the bus ride out into the countryside was beautiful. There are picture-perfect sights everywhere you turn in this country.

After returning to the Fiap, we loaded our metro passes, so now we'll look like real Parisians on our way about the city. Molly, Kelley and I then went to the Palais Royale where we sat in a park under an avenue of trees and wrote our journal entries for the day while watching a group of guys play pétanque (the French version of bocce). It was just as idyllic as I'm making it sound, and we only left because of some threatening storm clouds. We stopped at a café near the louvre on our way back home and I had a crêpe filled with nutella and bananas with whipped cream and vanilla ice cream on top. That was also as delicious as it sounds.

I think our accents are improving. Ye French have a way of adding extra sounds to the ends of their sentences that I've yet to master, but hopefully I'll sound convincingly French by the end of the week.

More things the French do/don't do:
Do:
- take their dogs everywhere
- men do the bisoux too
- smoke all the time

Don't:
- smile at strangers
- wait for lights to change at crosswalks
- provide speedy service in restaurants. You're expected to linger for at least two hours at every meal. Last night's one course dinner at a cheap sidewalk café (also delicious) lasted three hours.