More still...

On Friday, we went to Giverny at last! Madelyn and I woke up pretty late, so we didn't get going until 10 or so. Then we rode to the train station, and barely made our train headed to Vernon, the nearest stop to Giverny. When we got on the train, nearly all the seats were full, so Madelyn and I sat on the stairs for a while until a nice girl a bit further down the train pointed out 2 empty seats to us. When we got to Vernon, we took a cab to get to the house and gardens, and before going in, we sat on a bench and ate some food together for brunch.
Next, we bought our tickets for the museum and went in. You go through a gift shop first, which was Monet's actual studio in his day, and then you step out into the most beautiful garden.
Ever.
I'm not kidding. If I have never been sincere in my life, this one thing I mean: Monet's garden is beautiful. It was everything I planned on it being when I was eight years old and first wanted to go there. We walked through the main garden for a while first, and then we headed down the subterranean passage (generously donated by the Annenbergs) to the water gardens. I never thought they could look so much like the paintings do, although one can tell that he painted the ones at the Orangerie at dusk, when the light is more purple and grey. We were there in the afternoon. Well...I won't cover it in words, I guess. You can see the pictures for yourself. We went back to the main garden afterward, and then went to the gift shop, where we bought a few things. (Okay, cut me some slack. Monet is my favorite painter ever and I couldn't stand not getting one gorgeous thing in a shop chock full of Monet paraphernilia.) After some confusion, we got a cab back to Vernon and rode our train back to Paris.
After we came back from Giverny, we rode the metro home and just relaxed for a bit in our rooms before we decided to go to the Eiffel tower. We wanted to get there late, so it would be dark and lit when we went. We were going to leave the hotel at 9:30, but then Grandpa took a really long time at the front desk doing something, so we weren't even on the metro until 10:00 or so. Then it took us about half an hour to get there, plus there were lines. To make this brief, we weren't at the second level of the tower until about 11:30. Grandma and Grandpa were pretty tired, but Madelyn and I still wanted to ride to the top. So we waited in a big fat line. Behind us in the line were a boy and his girlfriend. He was all excited about going up, but she was being the worst Debbie Downer I have ever seen in my life. They had this really stupid argument and I just wanted to turn around and tell her to be optimistic. It was pretty sad. Anyway, we went to the top and took a lot of fun pictures, which you can see on my album here, and then we rode back down. When we got ready to go home, though, we saw that the RER was closed!! Can you beleive it? It actually closes! Anyway, after that we took a cab home, where we had scriptures and prayer and then we went to bed. :)
I will start a new post for the next day.