Ali and Maddie in France: A little bit of that

Day 24, June 21st: This morning, we woke up bright and early to ride an hour on the tour bus to Giverny to visit Monet's house and gardens. It was absolutely beautiful and quite refreshing to get out of the city for the first time in 3 weeks! After we hopped back on the tour bus (so nice to have our transportation already sorted out for us), and went to Montmartre. We climbed all the way up to Sacre Coeur, nearly the same path we had took just a few days earlier on our independent journey there. It was nice hearing Servane's commentary, as she had lived in Montmartre for 7 years. She guided us to the bakery with the best baguette where we bought lunch and ate it in the park housing Le Mur des Je t'aime. Once finished with our Montmartre trek, we hopped on the Metro and booked it to our French cooking lesson we were already late for! We arrived and they already had everything set up for us to dive in and start cooking. They had several different dishes for us to prepare, one of which was chocolate soufflé which we headed directly to. There were also options to make crunchy on the outside melty on the inside camembert, chicken, beef, veal, and potatoes, and chocolate fondue with fruit. It was a nice afternoon of eating fresh made French confections! Then we left and walked all the way to the Eiffel Tower where we had to wait in enormously long lines and go through two security checks. We took the elevator all the way up and enjoyed the crazy view from the top. After, we got to have dinner at the iconic restaurant, Chartier. The inside of this place is like stepping back in time or into a movie. A truly unique dining experience. Maddie ordered the entrecote and then prunes with vanilla ice cream for dessert, while Ali got the steak hache and then a mont blanc with espresso for dessert. We sat with Mademoiselle Downs and our friends Rowan and Patricia, so we enjoyed lively talks about studying abroad and learned of Mademoiselle's passion for sorority life! A fun night!