The Secret Garden

This is it, I promise- Day 5, our last day in France.

On this beautiful day (seriously- the best weather we could have asked for) we rented a lovely little car and drove an hour to Giverny, home of Claude Monet.

Now driving here is not necessary and it would have been very easy to take a train and shuttle (that the museum provides) to also enjoy the sites. We chose to drive because it was easier with the kids, the car seats, the snacks and so on. Even that was also easy, the rental place provided us with a GPS and it was a scenic trip.

Monet- a pretty famous painter, known for his gorgeous water lilies. Monet moved to the area in the early 1880s after passing Giverny on a train. He purchased the pink house (seen in the background of the picture below) along with all the surrounding gardens in 1890. He lived in the house with his family until his death in 1926.

The gardens are still kept up to the best of the foundations ability, preserving the atmosphere and nature of the same places Monet received inspiration from.

We also visited the Impressionist Museum in Giverny which was built in the 1990s. It is a rather small museum but was wonderful to walk around. They had a great exhibit while we were there about the Impressionist movement in Brussels. If you are going to make the trip out to this area it is definitely worth stopping at- the gardens were lovely here as well and it is literally a 3 min walk from Monet's house.

And that's it! Whew! You did it- you have made it through all of my recent travel updates! I'm so proud- I thought we would never get there..

Go ahead and check out the rest of the trip - Spain 1&2, Paris Day 1,2,3,&4.

Also- if you need any fun tips for NYC- go read my guest post over at The Grits Blog!