What a day! Out the door by 8am, home after 7pm.

T. and I started our morning by descending into the Metro and heading out to Montmartre, famous for its bohemian culture, striking church, and for being the location where that saccharine Amelie lived and worked her “magic.” (Excuse my vitriol in concerns to that movie. I am not alone: I heard a Frenchman last weekend refer to it as “powdered sugar in your eyes.” As we walked the streets, the first thing we found was a glue stick car. No really. I guess it’s like the Red Bull cars we see in the states only, um, with a glue stick on top.

We found a nice little cafe where we drank tea and wrote postcards to my friends and family back home. From there we headed to the Sacre Coeur, first enjoying the horse taking flight from the top of the carousel, and then headed up the stairs to the Sacre Coeur. What a beautiful church! Granted, one of the newer jewels of Paris (relatively speaking, of course), but still lovely.

Exiting the church we saw that it was raining, and so we hid under a tree and enjoyed the misty view looking over Paris. After two rounds of crêpes at the bottom of the hill, we headed down the streets of Montmartre, stopping to buy a psychotic umbrella that pops open at inopportune times, a tres Parisian scarf for me, and then to enjoy the tacky atrocity that the Moulin Rouge has become. Oh, and don’t forget about the coffee shop we passed. They had some great regional specials. HA! “The Seattle.”

After a brilliant sunbreak, we decided to risk it and head out to Giverny, the home of Claude Monet. We caught a 30 minute train out to a little town called Vernon, where, due to my needing to pee and a super bitchy driver who pulled away as we were pounding on his door, we missed the bus out to the gardens. The weather was back and forth between hot bursts of sun and screaming down rain, but we trusted our luck, had a quick picnic, and started the walk to Giverny.

What a blessing! I’m so glad that damn busdriver blew us off, because if he hadn’t we would have missed that lovely walk! Yes, it was long (about an hour and a half), but the birds were singing and the path was gorgeous. Making it all the sweeter was that a friend of T.’s, who’s boyfriend does studio work in Cologne, Germany, called to talk to T. about Dre perchance doing an internship there. Ooh!

We arrived at the gardens with our legs pleasantly sore, which made Monet’s gardens that much more beautiful. Now that’s my kind of “museum”: no walls, no paintings, just unfettered INSPIRATION.

Heading back to the train, the same mean bus driver turned us away (I guess it got full right before the green team boarded), and T. did cheerleading moves while explaining that another bus would come soon. People kept asking “Will another bus come?” and T. would say “Yes. Oui. Si. Hai.” Very funny.

We limped up the six flights to T.’s flat at almost 8pm. Wheeze. 12 hours of walking, metroing, training, bussing, and enjoying life.