Monet, Monet, Monet, Monet

When Karla asks me "what are you plans for the weekend?", getting up early on Sunday is never a first choice. In fact, in our eleven years together, it's never really been in the top three (or ten). But when you're on vacation, every day is kind of a Sunday, and July 5th, being the first Sunday of the month, and in the middle of a Parisian heat wave, meant that everyone would get free admission to every museum in Paris. Hence, our plans for Sunday was a trip to the northwest of Paris, requiring an early morning train from Paris to Vernon, capped with a short bus ride to Giverny.

Giverny is an exceedingly charming rural town (population 255) resting along the right bank of the Seine River. The architecture is simple and unassuming, but also beautifully photogenic as a result of the explosion of color contributed by the flowers that are seemingly everywhere. Also, every step in Giverny is accompanied by the songs of many, many different species of birds. I honestly cannot remember ever hearing so many different bird songs throughout the day, even as the heat of the sun began to settle over the town.

Of course, many of you will remember from your art history classes that Giverny is also a name that landed in the title of many of Claude Monet's paintings, owing to the fact that his home and gardens are situated there. Having seen Monet's works in books, I assumed he went out to some field, set up his easel, and started "impressioning" what he saw. And at the end of the day, he packed up everything and headed home. I was mistaken.

Monet took years to build his garden in Giverny. The oft painted pond adorned by water lilies that covered his canvasses was also a landscaping creation on his property. Much of the works that we all know (and that many of us bought as posters and then framed to be the art in our homes when we were twenty-somethings) were created at Monet's home "office."

One thing that Karla and I both noted in going through the museum was that Monet's signature and painting style changed dramatically in the early 1900s. Nothing unusual, artists often change the way they see or hear things. But nestled in a dark room in between many other photographs was a picture of Monet in 1922 or 1923, in a hospital bed, recovering from cataract surgery. He remained prolific, although somewhat fixated on his pond late in life, but we had to wonder if some of the change in his style didn't come about because he was truly seeing things differently.

Below is a link to some of our favorite pictures from our day in Giverny.

Giverny

Landing in Paris and Waking Up in Gay Paree

Karla and I consistently end up doing two things the last weekend each June. Primarily, we celebrate our wedding anniversary. Our second "do" for the weekend is really a "didn't" because after just under twelve months of telling ourselves we need to attend the SF Gay Pride Parade, we somehow miss it due to other commitments.

In 2009, we would be celebrating our anniversary in Paris, so we made no illusions about seeing the SF spectacle.

Our plane landed at Charles DeGaulle Airport early on June 27th. Instead of being ready to hit the ground running, we were just glad that we didn't hit the ground face first. (Mon ami are those Americans so happy to be in France that they are kissing the ground? Non. They had an overnight flight.)

While waiting in the lobby for our room to be readied, my eyes focused on a quiz show on the television which seemingly only had one topic for the enitre show: Gay Culture. There was no volume, but there were subtitles in French, but I don't speak or read French, so all of the answers in my head were in Jeopardy form ala questions. (Stonewall? Oscar Wilde? Baudelaire? Whichever one was that cute one on Queer Eye for the Straight Guy?)

So after one of those comotose, feel like you are falling deeper into the bed naps, Karla and I woke up bemoaning the fact that it being 5 pm, the museums would be closed, and we had wasted our first full day in Paris. We walked out of the hotel on a mission to see some sites. To our left, we saw a policeman standing in the center of a cordoned off street, and our interest was piqued.

We turned around the corner and a block away there was some sort of parade that made us bi-curious. Or is that both curious? A few steps later and we realized we had traveled 6000 miles to FINALLY attend a Gay Pride Parade.

Click the picture link below to see our seven best pix from that evening.

Gay Paree