Out on the open road...

After seeing how packed Paris was on Saturday, we decided that Sunday would be a great day to rent a car and head out of the city into the French countryside. So we headed out towards the Hertz rental car spot, which is under the Louvre. We of course had to stop for crêpes on the way and thankfully these were freshly made...

...YUM! We then picked up our rental car and headed out.

Well, we tried to head out, but the Hertz rental guy forgot to give us a ticket to get out of the lot, so they trapped our car and we had to walk all the way back to get our ticket.

Ok, now we are on our way...

We were driving to Giverny, the home of Claude Monet, which thankfully required us to drive right through Paris on the Champs-Élysées and through the huge traffic circle around the Arc de Triomphe.



It was a Sunday morning so there was not much traffic at the time.



We then headed on up the street towards the highway we needed to take.






Because we wanted to see little country towns (and avoid a toll...haha) we hopped off the highway a little early and drove through a few small towns on the Seine. They are such cute towns.





After a little direction from some French children (who spoke no English but talked in French with good pantomime) we realized we were still heading the correct direction thankfully.

We arrived in Giverny and sat down for a lunch in a little cafe by one of the impressionist museams.


It looked so nice until bees started swarming us...


Although lunch was pretty tasty, the bees made us hurry. We then headed to wait in line to enter Monet's home and garden. When I did this with my grandparents 15 years ago, I specifically remember my grandmother trying to pry these rocks out of the wall as we waited...

...and trying to get Ryan and I to help her...haha. As we were waiting an ice cream truck came and we had not had our morning quota of ice cream yet, so we indulged.

We then went into Monet's home and garden. They are so beautiful. The colors in the house are so bright and happy. Unfortunately, we can't take any pictures inside the house, so you will have to take our word for it. But here are the pictures we could take.


(Monet's home)





(Monet's garden)










(Monet's lillypad garden)

On the way back we decided to take country roads again.

And we picked up my first set of hitchhikers...

They were nice kids trying to get to town who spoke very little English, so we gave them a quick ride.

We then drove to St.-Germain-en-Laye which is a town right next to the town that I stayed in with my family 15 years ago. It has a very large Chateau and park around it that I watched fireworks from on my birthday 15 years ago. It was really cool to get to go back there.








We then sat down at a cafe for our second dose of ice cream...a banana split.


We headed back through Le Vesinet, the town I stayed in with my family. We couldn't find the place we stayed, but we snapped some pictures anyway.




We drove back to Paris. Traffic was a lot more hectic this time.




We made it safely through the packed traffic circle...

And headed towards the Louvre...


Right at the end a motorcycle almost clipped us. So I was very thankful to get back in the garage without a wreck.

We walked up to St. Germain de pres and walked around that area a little bit.

Then we decided it was time for dinner....pizza...

Darcy ate her whole pizza and then did this right in the middle of the Champs-Élysées...

Actually, that is from the police horse...haha...A nice way to end another day in Paris...