Paris and Giverny in a day (1)

Four train journeys, a pre-booked but weather-vulnerable visit to a garden, a strange city, 3 travellers with a combined age of 209 ...surely something would go wrong?

But no - for blogging purposes it was a total disaster. The worst thing to happen was that I didn't like my brother's favourite beer (Belgian, revolting ...after I drank it he told me it was flavoured with cumin!) which he insisted was my birthday treat.

So I'll just have to write about what a nice time we had.

When asked, a couple of years ago, where she would like to visit before her passport runs out Mum said she had always wanted to see Monet's garden at Giverny. We had planned a trip last year but she fell and broke her hip, so it ended up as a 90th birthday treat this year, paid for by her 3 sons. Two of us agreed to take her, and for simplicity we booked the Eurostar to Paris for 2 nights and an afternoon minibus trip out to Giverny.

Mum uses a mobility scooter at home because it takes her a long time to cover much ground on foot, so I borrowed a lightweight transit wheelchair from the local Red Cross (brilliant service) for the trip. The journeys were all on time and we met Mark at St Pancreas as agreed. The hotel (Albert 1er) was a short walk from the Gard de Nord and perfect for a B and B with plenty of restaurants to choose from nearby (with English translations on the menus, unlike 30 years ago!).

It was raining the afternoon we arrived so we agreed to be up early and do a bus tour the next morning.We had to be back at the hotel to be picked up for the Giverny tour at 1:15.

L'OpenTour do 4 hop-on-hop-off routes with a Yellow Line stop at Gard du Nord, so we were there for the first bus at 9:15 and switched to their Green Line at Place de la Madeleine. It was dry and sunny and being August 9 I wore my Jerry Garcia T-shirt, which I do every year on the anniversary of his death.

Next time I'd use the service buses as a lot of time (80%) was spent stationary while new passengers paid the driver, but on the Green Line you get to see all the famous places: the Seine and several of the bridges, the Louvre, the Champs Elysee, the Eiffel Tower (from every angle), the Place de la Concorde, the Musée d'Orsay . And the commentary was good, too (though 80% was filler consisting of cheesy Paris-related ditties).

I'd seen these buildings before, but not the amazing vertical garden on the wall of the Musée du quai Branly (15,000 plants from 150 different varieties). Or all the padlocks left by lovers on the bridges.

The Green Line circuit took about 2 hours and we couldn't risk being late for our pick-up so we opted to get a taxi back to the hotel rather than complete the Yellow Line circuit. There was just time to grab a Subway sandwich and eat it in the hotel lobby.