Best Till Last: Monet's Garden - 6

The day we visited the Eiffel Tower was technically our last day of the trip. But I just had to save the best until last : Monet's Garden. As we arrived, we were each given our own beautifully designed ticket, allowing us to visit his home & garden.

We explored the front garden first and even though it was huuuge, every single detail was attended to, with several volunteer gardeners working away happily. The flowers were so beautiful, I could have sat there and sketched away for hours...

Below: Libby, myself, Louise & Safa
(Notice how I decided to bust out the floral shirt? Ooh yeaaah)

After our first explorations of the garden, we entered the house. No photos were allowed but it was incredible. One of the rooms was filled with around 50 very real replica's of Monet's work & it was awesome. The colours were so pretty & to be able to be where his paintings took inspiration from was such a privilege.

Louise & I stayed in that room for aaages, it was incredible. It was also interesting to see how many Asian images filled the house, their style very different to his, but beautiful nevertheless.

As we came out of the house, a little more exploring of the first garden was in order. In our venture, we discovered some unusual chickens residing in the grounds & a little girl with this beautiful (very fitting) umbrella to shade from the sun.

Louise & I agreed it would be so perfect to volunteer as a gardener here. Every single day you'd get to see these surroundings & have the privilege of being here.

Cheekily, I asked a gardener if I could do a little gardening. He agreed happily & kindly explained how the tools worked to me, so I could do my not-so-touristy photo for the album.

The garden in two main parts. For the second part, you had to go underground in a little passageway. The second garden is the water garden, where Monet got his inspiration for his most famous pieces.

When we got there, Louise decided to do some fishing.

On the other side of the iconic bridge below, we found a couple of benches & grabbed them.

We got our sketchbooks & watercolours out to paint the beautiful scene. Passers by were really lovely as they 'ooed' and 'aaahed' at our work, and an elderly couple we had made friends with earlier on in the garden even went as far as calling me 'Claudette Monet'. I was pretty chuffed.

We were so happy to be in this charming garden, we couldn't help but skip our way along, with huge grins across our faces.

At one point, we slipped away to a less hectic part of the garden & found a spot to quickly dip our toes into the river. (It had to be done...)

This also had to be done.

Monet's Garden concludes our Parisian adventures. I would go back in a heartbeat, especially here.

Listening tooo: Bastille's album - 'Bad Blood' (This sounds amazing with good bass!)