June 16th, Giverny & Paris

Today is bittersweet because we have to leave wonderful people to head to Paris.  Lisa and her family made us feel so at home in Thouville.  We will always feel like we have family in France from now on.  We can only hope that we can pay their kindness forward.

We headed to Paris via Giverny where we visited Claude Monets home and gardens.  This is where he was inspired to paint so many of his lily pond portraits.  It was wonderful to see all the beautiful flowers but the pond area was breathtaking.  I wish we would have gotten there early and headed there first.

The guys had decided to drive into Paris and drop us off at the apartment, let me tell you God was with us today.  Don't ever drive in Paris if you don't have to.  We got into a roundabout that was a free-for-all that I wasn't sure we would make it out of without some dents in the car but we did.  We made it safely to the apartment where they only stopped long enough for us to get the luggage out of the car and onto the sidewalk.  So Pam and I loaded with all the luggage headed into the apartment building and lucky for us the rental agent was there to meet us and got us into the building.  We loaded Pam up in the elevator with most of the bags (I would not have fit in there) and she pushed the button to go to the 2nd floor but ended up in the basement and not knowing that, she unloaded the suitcases by herself and then I could hear her longingly call "Diane where are you" I felt helpless as I stood there saying "I am where you left me.  Where are you?".  So I decided to carry the other two suitcases up to the second floor and dropped them off and then headed down stairs to look for her but by the time I got down to the basement Pam had loaded the suitcases back into the elevator by herself and headed to the 2nd floor.  I was able to get back up there and finish helping unload the elevator.  After being shown the apartment we unpacked our bags and I headed off to the market to get food for dinner.

While we were waiting for the guys to get back from dropping off the rental car.  Pam got the shock of her life when we were looking out our balcony windows and saw some half dressed firemen in the window across from us (she turned all sorts of red).  Later Roger and Mike got the same view so Roger had to make a remark as me on my facebook about the well built bodies.