Aaron Around The World - Monet's Garden

It's been, umm, about eight months since my last decent European trip (Germany road trip last August) - high time for another: two weeks in Scandinavia! Scandinavia is a region of northern Europe that includes Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, though Finland and Iceland and the like are often thrown in there too. It covers a massive area with many major cities and attractions, but unfortunately there's only so much time in the day. As such, I'm going to concentrate on the western part of it, and maybe try to group the rest into an Eastern Europe trip some time in the future seeing as I've managed to see very little of it during my time here. So, Kristina and I fly into Copenhagen, Denmark this Friday for a few days (happy Easter to us!) before getting a train up to Gothenburg, Sweden for a day, followed by another train up to Oslo, Norway for a couple more days. From Oslo we pick up a hire car and spend a couple days heading west to Stavanger on Norway's west coast, and eventually finishing with a few days up in Bergen. Mountains and lakes and fjords galore, stunning enough to rival New Zealand's apparently but I'll be the judge of that. We're flying in and out of London, and the day after we get back Kristina gets back on another plane to head back home to Texas, where I'll be meeting her in about four months if all goes to plan but that's another story :)


Claude Monet was a French artist who died in 1926, and because I know as much about art as I do about Mandarin Chinese I'll just quote Wikipedia here and say that Monet "was a founder of French impressionist painting, and the most consistent and prolific practitioner of the movement's philosophy of expressing one's perceptions before nature, especially as applied to plein-air landscape painting." Monet's former home and famous gardens not far out of Paris were restored and opened to the public in 1980. His gardens inspired many of his works, and hence are a major tourist attraction for the artsy among us. Getting there first involves a 45-minute train ride heading west out of Paris to the town of Vernon. I dare say if not for Monet, nobody would bother venturing here - not a lot going on.


From Vernon's train station you can get a taxi, a bus, or simply walk the 5kms to Giverny where Monet's home is.


While Vernon is home to about 25,000, Giverny is home to just 500 and it's a beautiful wee village (aside from the swathes of tourists).


The village contains many wee arts and crafts shops, no doubt trying to cash in on the passing tourists.		And this is what they all come to see - the former home of Claude Monet...


...and his gardens. Monet initially rented this two acres of land in 1883 after noticing Giverny while looking out of a train window and deciding to move there (as you do), but by 1890 had become wealthy enough through sales of his art to buy the property outright and set about creating a magnificent garden that he then wanted to paint


I also know as much about flowers as I do about art. I do know these ones are pretty though ;)


Bloody hell, hippie chickens (or something)! These things look like they're straight out of the 70s with their cool hairstyles (the pair at the back there appear to be making out - sex, drugs, and rock and roll man!).				So yes, Monet's gardens, lovely.


Right across the road, Monet's garden continues to this stunning area (aside from the swathes of tourists), and it's this pond that features in many of his paintings (do a Google Images search on "Monet pond" for some examples).


These Japanese-style bridges feature in a few of Monet's paintings too, but of course the bloody tourists are all over them constantly so it's impossible to get a decent shot, but oh well.				So yes, Monet's water lily pond, lovely.


Well after two awesome weeks in one of the most expensive but naturally beautiful parts of the world, we're broke hehe, and I now have over 600 photos to sort through (as well as several videos!). In other news, Kristina flew back to Texas this morning after living with me in Paris for the last five months, and as I mentioned above the plan is for me to join her over there among other things at the end of summer, but again I'll divulge all once it's all figured out. In the meantime, I'm heading back to Paris at least for this week, and this time in three weeks I'll be celebrating my 29th birthday in Slovenia - hooray for that (the Slovenia part I mean, not the turning 29 part).


So I'm back in Paris (and damn it's good to be back - the chaotic traffic and the rude Frenchies everywhere hehe), but for now I'm only here until Thursday. Right now my company and my client are negotiating a contract extension, and until the bureaucratic bullshit is sorted I'll be stuck in dirty old London!


I found this around the corner from my apartment today - this lot thinking it'd be a great idea to have sit-down protest in the middle of a busy city intersection. All they did was piss everybody off, and get moved on by the police hehe.		I have no idea what it was all about, and neither did this guy.


Anyway, I'm heading back to London for the time being until work contracts are approved and signed and all that, and I can come back again (hopefully in just a few weeks or so). I'm not happy to be leaving but such is life.