Day 5

vendredi, le 12 juin

We started our day early by saying "Au revoir!" to our temporary home of Caen. It was a wet morning, but c'est la vie en France! We traveled the countryside for about two hours, heading towards Giverny. I'm pretty sure the kiddos slept part of the way. France has been keeping them up at night and waking them early! The tradeoff for this early morning was the decadent croissants waiting for us.

Giverny Gardens

Claude Monet's famous Japanese Bridge in Monet's Garden

The quaint town of Giverny is so small and in the blink of an eye you could easily pass it you're not paying attention. We discovered how the celebrated artist Claude Monet lived and viewed some of his work. We then strolled through the gardens that were fresh and still dew covered from the morning rains. It made the colors of the flowers more vibrant, we could feel the breath of the trees and it amplified the lushness of the lily pads. It was easy to see why Monet felt the need and desire to try to capture such natural beauty. 

We then took off for Paris and dropped off our bags at our hotel near Montparnasse. This area of Paris is quite bustling, with streets lined with cafés, restaurants, brasseries, big and small boutiques. The students took some time to go shopping on "Rue de Rennes" in search of souvenirs from France from the likes of H&M, Mango and Kookaï. We grabbed a café to rest our feet from all that "souvenir" shopping before heading off to dinner at Chez Clement, a charming and stereotypical French restaurant that ACIS hand selected for us.

After dining, we set out determined to make it up the Eiffel Tower before nightfall. We waited a good while in line before taking the elevators up to the second floor. We tried to identify the various monuments from the view that layed before us, spotting the Arc de Triomphe, Notre Dame, the Pantheon and Sacre Coeur Basilica atop the hill of St. Denis.

Heading to the Eiffel Tower

Exhausted from the day's sightseeing and travels, we headed back to hotel. Tomorrow we will start our day by visiting St. Chapelle followed by a tour of Versailles. Dinner that evening will be spent at a restaurant specializing in North African cuisine and meeting up with my dear friend, Peggy, and her husband and daughter. Peggy is the daughter of the family that hosted our dessert tasting, Annick and Jean-Luc Bouton.

Until tomorrow!  À bientôt!

-Mademoiselle Sadler