Giverny

After finally learning how to say the name of this town properly (Jah-ver-nay), we have decided to take a day trip to visit Monet's gardens.  The kids are too excited for words, as you can imagine, to see a garden full of flowers and lilypads that some famous artist painted a long time ago.  No matter how much history and culture we try and feed them, whilst living in such a historical country, they are still more excited by ice cream and carrousels.  

The drive is quaint and not nearly as far outside Paris as we thought.  We arrive in under an hour and the kids are already whinging about what is there and what they're going to do there.  Sam soon realises this is not a 'kids day', it's a parents day and therefore decides to make it as painful as possible for us.  Even one of the American tourists appreciates his charm when after some loud whinging she says 'well aren't you delightful'.  Anyway, we press on and try to teach our kids about the beauty of nature and why Monet wanted to paint such landscapes.  Not sure if they realised this when we left as thier only desire was to get back in the car to continue watching the movie they had started on the way.  

So that leads me to ask, is it even possible to teach our kids about culture nowadays, or are they too screen focused and full of hydrogenated oils and E-chemicals to care?  We leave feeling a bit cheated on our experience but at least I got some cute photos of Ruby with some pretty flowers, and we picked up some lovely cushions as a souvenir.