Street protests and uncollected garbage, price-gouging and dismissive arrogance seemed to have become accepted parts of the current Parisian cocktail and I could sense that Pattie was becoming disenchanted. Like any first-time visitor, she’d heard so much about the City of Light and her naturally high expectations were being thrashed before my very eyes.
I decided a trip out of the city was called for and where better to head than the incredible gardens of that big, bearded botanical Impressionist painter Claude Monet in Giverny on the banks of the Seine some 60 kilometres northwest of Paris.
But how to get there?
An intriguing answer came from the eccentrically-named Fat Tire Bicycle Tour Company (www.fattiretours.com) who offered a full-day cycling trip to see, up close and personal, the fabulous flowers, ponds, bridges and water lilies that so inspired Monet’s wondrous daubing.
Next morning, bright and early, saw Pattie and I joining a group of ardent Pedal-files assembling at the Gare Saint-Lazare for Fat Tire’s full-day tour led by bouncy, pony-tailed Amelia who proved to be a fountain of knowledge about French art, having acquired a degree in the history of art from Columbia University.
Our eclectic group included tattooed and abundantly pierced digital wanderers with selfie sticks akimbo, through to ardently bearded culture vultures, plus a brace of smiley American grandparents with real, old-fashioned cameras slung around their bobbing necks.
We piled aboard the train for an hour’s ride west of Paris along the Seine, then disembarked and got kitted out with our bikes, which had been languishing in a riverside shed awaiting our arrival.
After a brief briefing about how not to fall off our bikes, we rode to the country market in Vernon to buy our picnic lunch. This featured a fabulous selection of local produce including wondrous salads, meats, freshly-baked breads, cheeses to die for and of course flagons of local wines at low, non-Thailand tax rated, prices.
Pattie, being an excellent cook, was in her element. She, like many Thai girls, learned to cook at her mama’s knee, the knee in question having been located in the family home in the middle of Krabi Town. Couple that enviable early baptism into the culinary arts with a subsequent university degree in medical science, within which studying healthy nutrition was a prominent part, and you can understand Pattie’s unbridled enthusiasm for superb, healthy foods.
We loaded up our backpacks with produce and headed off for a group picnic lunch on the banks of the Seine beside an ancient stone bridge surrounded by a ‘gaggle’ of garrulous ducks who were obviously well versed in the art of begging for morsels form gullible day-tripping cyclists.
Post-lunch we pedalled the short distance along the river pathway to the tiny village of Giverny and Monet’s stunning house where we then spent a glorious few hours walking about Monet’s famous gardens, lily pools and Japanese bridges, drinking in the riotous floral incandescence that inspired the master in his famous impressionist paintings.
The gardens are truly magnificent and one can understand why Monet dedicated so much of his time and genius to capturing on canvas these magnificent scenes. We saw the now water-logged punt, in which the great man used to sit for hours on end painting en plein air and the fairytale Japanese Bridge which he made so famous in his depictions of Les Nympheas.
Now I may be a little biased in this, but I can’t help thinking that if Monet had had the privilege of seeing this stunning Thai smile amidst his beloved begonias and roses, he would have immediately reached for his pallet and brushes and the result would have been a painting to rival that highly overrated smile of Leonardo’s Moaning Lisa!
But as I say, I could well be a little biased.
‘Bicycling’ Baz Daniel has been penning his Blazing Saddles column, chronicling his cycling adventures in Phuket and beyond, since 2013.