Iceland, 26 September 2022

For our second day in Reykjavik, we get up early enough to catch some pastries at Brauð & Co., often seen on "best of" lists for Icelandic bakeries. The Icelandic alphabet has 32 letters, most of which are Latinate but some of which come from runes. Ð, lowercase ð, is the letter eth and is sometimes pronounced as d and sometimes as th and is all-times confusing to me. Another one you see a lot is Þ, lowercase þ, and is the runic letter thorn. Icelandic is the only living language to maintain this letter (it showed up in languages like Old Welsh and Old Norse) and is usually pronounced th. The brilliant Viking researcher Dr. Neil Price has a really great note about Old Norse/Viking pronunciation and writing in the very first part of his most recent book, Children of Ash and Elm. I actually have met Dr. Price twice, both times when I was working at the National Nordic Museum in Seattle, and he’s one of the most well-spoken and intelligent speakers I’ve ever heard.

A great sign in Brauð & Co; my chocolate croissant with Hallgrímskirkja in the background

I take Jason to the The Icelandic Phallological Museum (aka "the penis museum") just so he can say he did it. I went last time I was in Iceland, and it was above ground, on a corner building in a busy area. It's since moved to a very nicely redone underground area. They have a cafe that specializes in penis-shaped waffles. We walk around the museum, and the combination of the wet specimen jars and sweet waffle smell is off-putting.

A field mouse baculum. A baculum, or "penis bone," is a bone in the penis of some mammals that aids in reproduction by giving the penis the requisite stiffness for penetration. It is not present in humans (okay so explain where we get the euphemism "boning" from, scientists!?)

Make no mistake—the exhibits are gross. The penises on display are mostly wet specimens—which is biological matter floating in isopropyl alcohol in a jar—and they're disgusting to look at. Picture lots of beige tubes gently floating in pickle jars and you get the gist. I accidentally start us going the wrong direction, so the last thing we see are the ungulate wieners and the first thing we see is a human man's wang. The donor had red hair, in case you were wondering. On our way out, I'll see the cafe's tip jar—which is a giant carved wooden cock-n-balls, says "just the tips."

Wrong way

After, we take a walking tour of the city called "Elves, Trolls, and Ghosts of Reykjavik," which are basically the most important things to me in any city. Our guide, Guðni, ends up being the most patient man I've ever met, because our group of only 6 tourists is 50% dumbasses. There's an older white man from California in our group, as well as two women (presumed elderly daughter and even more elderly mom) also from California, and all three of them are insufferable. The women spend time talking to one another and constantly say "What?" to Guðni when they invariably miss half of what he explains. The man is apparently trying to get an A+ in Annoying Tourist because whenever Guðni stops to draw breath, the man asks things like "Do cars cost a lot of money in Iceland? How much did your house cost? Okay, but are trolls really real?" At one point in the tour, Guðni has to say something like "That's a great question, but what I'd really like to talk about is this statue and story" to be able to continue the tour.

Our first stop on the tour is above a Viking settlement excavation, which is part of The Settlement Exhibition for the Reykjavík City Museum. It's a big glass box that rests on the sidewalk, which if you look down you see the excavation of a Viking settlement below. Guðni explains that the settlement is from the year 871...plus-or-minus 2 because the dating isn't exact. We see references to 871 +/- 2 everywhere, which makes me really happy: I love when museums are honest that they don't have all the answers, and are just working with the best information available to them at the time. Discovered during construction work in 2001, the settlement is the earliest evidence of human habitation in Reykjavík, and is a longhouse and collection of artifacts found right there on site.

The map

Next, our guide takes us to a huge topographical map inside a city building to give us the scope of Iceland. Turns out, it's about the size of Ohio. If you took every person who ever lived in Iceland from 871 (plus or minus 2) until now, you still wouldn't have a million people. Where Jason and I will visit this trip is a shallow C-shape made from the West Fjords (northwest), Reykjavík in the southwest, the Golden Circle, which is central-ish, and Vík in the south. Guðni points out Eyjafjallajökull, a volcano that famously erupted over a series of months in 2010, sending ash across Iceland and Europe. Later, I'll buy a vase from a ceramic artist who mixes ash from that eruption into her glaze, creating a dark speckle across her work.

Hallgrímskirkja in the distance; Hooper swans in the foreground

Guðni continues our tour, leading us around a man-made pond and to a few public artworks. He tells us that when people first came to Iceland, the gods were tools to explain the natural phenomenon they were seeing. Lightning and thunder was the god Þór (Thor) riding across the heavens in his chariot. The Vikings and their descendants had a very personal relationship with the gods, who were talked to, sacrificed to, prayed to. When the Christianity came to Iceland in the year 1000, the Church of course banned worship of these old gods. Guðni shares that in many communities, the statues of Thor, Odin, and others were often cast into waterfalls to appease the clergy...but the farmers hid their statues of Frejya and Frigg and continued to worship them in secret. As Guðni put it "These were practical farmers. Worshiping their gods of fertility and harvest had done well so far...why change?"

With Christianity, according to Guðni, came a rise in troll rhetoric. He explains that at this time in history, the Church began using stories of trolls as parables. In these stories, trolls represented the wicked wilds, and the people who outwitted them did so by following the new Christian doctrines. Jason and I will see trolls later in our trip: Reynisdrangar, the sea stacks off the coast of Vík, are trolls who stayed out too late and got caught by sun, which turned them to stone.

Domkirkjan, a small Lutheran church in downtown right next to the Althingishus (Parliament House)


“The gods were to explain natural phenomenons, and the trolls were a tool of the church. But stories of the hidden folk, those were for the people,” shares Guðni. Huldufólkh—hidden people, or elves—were and continue to be a part of Icelandic life. Today, over half the population of Iceland reports they believe in elves or the possibility that elves exist. The hidden people may be an amalgamation of the elves/nature spirits of the Vikings and the fae/nature spirits of the enslaved Irish people that arrived in Iceland, although some researchers believe there remain two distinct entities. Regardless, hidden people are not like Victorian fairies—small beings the flit around like butterflies. The hidden folk of Iceland are human-looking magical beings that live in a parallel world but who can and do slip through the veil to live alongside us, helping or vexing people as they choose.

“Have you ever seen an elf?” interrupts the man at one point in Guðni’s talk. Guðni is taken aback, and seems reluctant to share his own story. “I have not seen them, but I have felt them,” he finally shares. “Oh yes, I’ve felt them!” says one of the women excitedly. “You can definitely feel them, it’s like…a feeling. Like a presence.” Her companion agrees, and the man talks with them as we continue our walk. I want to ask Guðni so many questions about his experience, but from his reaction I don’t think he wants to talk about it.

A small building in the center of the Old Churchyard

The last part of our tour is at Hólavallagarður, also called the Old Churchyard. It’s Reykjavik’s “new” cemetery, meaning it was established in the 1800s, not the Viking era. It’s a wonderfully peaceful spot, with mossy pathways dappled by the sun breaking through fall-brightened leaves. The sound of nearby traffic is drowned out by birdsong. Guðni weaves us around the plots, many blooming with heather, leading us to the small graif of Steinunn Sveinsdóttir.

More than two hundred years ago, Steinunn Sveinsdóttir and her husband, a farmer, purchased some land with some friends of theirs, another husband-and-wife pair. Eventually, after living and working together, Steinunn and the other man fell in love. Steinunn would profess to her dying day that she was not an accomplice to their murders, but as it happened the man killed Steinunn’s husband and his own wife. The pair was tried, and both sentenced to death. There was trouble in finding an executioner willing to carry out Steinunn’s sentence, however. Eventually tired of the delay, the local authorities found someone in Norway willing to do the killing, but before she could be sent off, Steinunn died in prison.

As a criminal, Steinunn was unable to be buried in the cemetery. Instead, her grave was a cain on the hill near present-day Hallgrímskirkja. As people walked past her grave, it became the custom to add another rock to her burial mound.

…until people began seeing Steinunn Sveinsdóttir again, that is. Steinunn was said to appear to people, sad, crying, forlorn. She said the weight of all these rocks was too heavy. She was innocent, and the burden was too much to bear. People began championing Steinunn’s innocence, requesting her verdict be overturned and her body laid to rest in the cemetery. Steinunn was eventually exhumed and reburied in the cemetery. Today, a small white cross marks her grave, and people leave angel figurines at her grave. Her ghost has not been seen since her reburial.

Steinunn's grave, marker erected in 2012

Possibly my favorite fact about Iceland relates to their graveyards: in Iceland, the first person buried in a graveyard is said to be its guardian. The guardian’s spirit protects all of the dead who are buried after them in their cemetery. Holavallagarour’s guardian, Guðrún Oddsdóttir, died in 1838. I think I would like to be a graveyard guardian.

Plots in the Old Churchyard. When I die, I shall become a graveyard guardian

After the tour, Jason and I circle back to the Reykjavik City Museum to check out the Settlement Exhibition from the inside. We walk down a spiraling staircase, belowground where the exhibit begins. The museum was built around the 2001 find of this Viking longhouse. The museum has a really unusual setup. The ceilings are low (we are underground, afterall), and there is one skylight that lets in daylight from the street above (the glass box we peeked through on our tour). Some of the artifacts found at the site are in wall vitrines that surround the excavation site.

Jason and I experience museums very differently. He’s an information gatherer, reading almost every label and tag. Museum professionals like me love visitors like him, because they answer the “so what?” and “who cares?” about our jobs. Museum professionals are challenged by visitors like me, on the other hand, who flit from one item to another, ignoring chronology, linear storytelling, or methodology. I don’t remember dates or facts or figures in this exhibit. What I do remember is that by the bathrooms, some designer has included a mouse hole-sized cutout in the wall. An LED screen in the hole plays a video of a little mouse that scurrys back and forth, occasionally peering out at the viewers. I identify with this mouse.

   
The dug walkways make the longhouse excavation site at about chest-height. There is one skylight for daylight, and vitrines built in the walls around the excavation

There’s more museum, but it’s less interesting to me, mostly Reykjavik’s industrial history. I do like that the elevators have a label on them that says “time machine” (timavél in Icelandic) since by using them you skip from the Viking era to the 1900s. We take the spiraling staircase back up to street level and 2022.

Jason’s tired again, so I drop him off at the hotel and go back out to walk some more. I find a statue of a bear outside of a home. The marble base it sits on says BERLIN 2380 KM. I find graffiti that says SEXY GOBLIN 2019, a shop cat with a sign requesting visitors not disturb him while he’s sleeping (he asleep so I let him be), and an ice cream shop I want to try later. I swing by to get Jason, and we walk to the Reykjavik Fish Restaurant for dinner, and get pretty good fish and chips. 

We decide to try Brennivín, Iceland’s signature liquor. It’s flavored with caraway, and I’ve heard it described as tasting like liquorice, like rye bread, and like herbs. Jason goes to the bar and orders it, but the woman behind the counter doesn’t understand him when he says “bren-A-vin.” She tries to teach us how to say it: emphasis on the first syllable, a rolled r, an indescribable Nordic-ness to her pronunciation. Jason will later read that in Icelandic, if you have to guess at how to pronounce something your best bet is to emphasize the first syllable. Another bartender, this one with long dark hair, comes up to us to pour the shots. So far, wait staff have been polite, but reserved. As she pours the shot, the glass overflows and her eyes get side. “I’m not a bartender!” she laughs, and the humanity of the moment is incredibly touching. She looks at us dubiously as we skål and take our shots. I make a face back at her as I swallow. “It’s horrible,” she agrees. “I hate it.” As this trip progresses, Jason will tell me this is one of his favorite memories of our whole trip.

 

We walk back to the hotel down the rainbow road, stopping to pet cats and people watch. 

Iceland, 25 September 2022

I started this blog in March 2016 to help me remember my first international trip: a visit to Iceland with some friends from grad school. Six years later and I'm back in Reykjavik with my husband, Jason, on his first international trip. I've wanted to share this place with him ever since I arrived the first time, and I'm so excited I finally get to.

The flight is delayed by an hour, but uneventful. We leave Seattle at about 4:50pm on a Saturday, and because of the time difference and 7 hour flight, we get into Keflavik Airport at about 7:00am on a Sunday. I hate flying so much: I get congested, and wickedly nauseated, and as a fat person it's hard to fit comfortably in a seat (okay, it's pretty impossible to be in coach no matter your size). The airport is pretty small, and I'm surprised by how much I remember (we turn left here and there will be a bathroom on the right, customs is up the stairs, there's a bus terminal right by the exit). Last time I was here was Easter Sunday in 2016, and I was flying back to Seattle. The airport had hidden golden eggs throughout the terminals for kids me to find, and I found two or three before I decided to leave some for others because I'm so very selfless.

It's the law that if you travel by plan you have to take this photo

We board a bus that will take us from the airport to Reykjavík while the wind tries to smother a fellow passenger with his own scarf. Reykjavík, Iceland's capital, is also the world’s most northern capital city. I don't really know where I'm going, but I know I booked in downtown, which is small enough I figure we can find our hotel no matter where the bus drops us. We get off at Stop 14 by the Harpa, and walk with another traveler up, up, up the hill several blocks to our respective hotels. He breaks the ice by saying "Nice sweater" to Jason, who is wearing the same sweater the Dude wears in The Big Lebowski. When we packed that morning, Jason had told me "I didn't have anything else in my backpack, so I packed my Big Lebowski sweater so I can wear it at the Big Lebowski bar!" and like the Grinch, my heart grew three sizes.

Hopefully our new friend Trevor (from Victoria—Canada, not Washington) got his hotel room okay, because we do not. We find the building just fine, but the attendant on duty makes a yikes face, and tells us there's a been a booking issue. Apparently they double-booked, so instead they put us in a room at their sister hotel. She confides in us that this is actually fortunate for us, because the current hotel is kinda crappy ("Very old, not very nice," she says) but this other hotel is much newer and nicer. We walk back down the hill to our new hotel, just steps from the bus stop and. They're very kind here, and let us check in early and give us free drinks for later in their bar for the inconvenience.

Heart-shaped hot cocoa (they spell it "coco") on our first morning

We drop our bags and head out to find breakfast on Laugavegur, Reyjkavik's main street. The name means "water road" or "wash road," because back when the road was being built (1880s), women would come down to that street to wash their clothes in geothermal pools. Today, Laugavegur is where the boutiques, tacky tourist shops, tattoo parlors, and restaurants are, so it's a good place to start. We find a tiny cafe in a building that looks like a house. The six tables are full, and the lone teenager behind the counter informs us "It's just me. You can wait, but it's going to take me awhile to get to you." There's an indoor swing chair that's available, so I'm happy to wait. My hot chocolate comes in a heart-shaped mug.

 

Hallgrímskirkja, the tallest church in Iceland. You can go to the top for a bird's eye view of the city, but our schedule won't work out the entire time we're in Iceland to visit.

Reykjavik has wonderful street art. Buildings and businesses have murals painted on the side, and I search for my old favorite (a woman transforming into a wolf) but it is covered by construction. Iceland is a good place to be an artist. In fact, 25% of Icelanders work in a creative job (and 1 in 10 have published a book, too, by the way). There's a host of reasons why, as this thesis lays out, but it comes down to major factors including an egalitarian society, a de-emphasis on test scores in school, an emphasis on free-play in kids (and adults, as the giant hopscotch on Laugavegur attests), and a national pride in making things by hand.

 

Day valkyrie, night valkyrie

Einstein and Tupac sharing a beer

We walk up and down the blocks, window shopping and people-watching. Shopkeepers are very unlike American cashiers, who often say hello the moment you walk in, welcome you, ask you how you are. They're polite, sure, but not fawning. I say "Hej hej" when I enter (an informal Nordic greeting) and "Takk" when I leave (Icelandic for "thanks"), and hope I'm not basically someone's dad mispronouncing "Gracias" at a Mexican restaurant.

Not sure what they're selling; no plans to find out

We go to the big flea market, but it's not nearly as good as I remember so we leave after looking at just a couple stalls. Jason's tired, so we go back to the hotel so he can take a nap. I prefer to power through jet lag, so I go back out and wander some more. I find a convenience store to get power converters for our cell phone chargers. I get another hot chocolate, this time from a bookstore cafe that apparently has a seagull problem. I drink it outside and people watch, while two musicians (a dad and son, I think) play a mix of classic American music and Icelandic songs. I hear "Ring of Fire," something in Icelandic, and a few more before I get too cold and wander back to the hotel. I've put in 15,000 steps and haven't slept in over 24 hours.

Beware of Steve

When I take this photo, four tourists on electric scooters almost crash trying to see what I’m looking at. From my perspective it looks like the stairs go nowhere, but from their perspective it looks like a weird tourist is taking a photo of nothing special.

Cats are kept as pets throughout Iceland, but they’re especially known for roaming downtown Reykjavík. They came over with the island’s first inhabitants in the ninth century, prized for both their mouse-catching abilities and their fur. Now, there are an estimated 20,000 cats in Iceland (which has a population of only about 376,000 people), and one source puts 12,000 of them in Reykjavík alone. Because geothermal heat is cheap, homes and apartments are easy to keep warm, and folks will leave a window cracked even in winter for a fresh breeze. Which means cats come and go as they please, wandering the town, catching mice and rats, and delighting tourists. With no coyotes, raccoons, or urban foxes, and low speed limits in the city, the cats don’t have much to worry about in terms of predators. Another bonus for the cats of Reykjavík: there aren’t many dogs. Of course, there are working dogs in the country, but dogs were banned in Reykjavík from 1924 all the way through 1984 in order to combat a fatal tapeworm that spread throughout the country.

The friendliest cat I met

 
For dinner, we go to Lebowski Bar, which has a funky thematic mixture of 40s pin-up, bowling, and 80s/90s American movies. Of course, the main focus is the movie The Big Lebowski, with a Big Lebowski-themed menu (the Donny is a cheeseburger, and the Walter is a bacon cheeseburger) and an extensive White Russian Menu. I specifically wanted to come to the Lebowski Bar because Jason is such a fan of the movie, but my secondary motivation is their milkshakes, which are the best I’ve ever had.

Abiding his time

After dinner, we walk over to Skólavörðustígur Street in the dark to check out the famous Rainbow Street. Originally painted for a Pride celebration, the rainbow section of Skólavörðustígur became permanent in 2019, with citizens—including Reykjavík’s mayor—helping to paint the colorful stripes. During our days in the city, we’ll see dozens of tourists lined up to take photos on the street. Walking back to our hotel for the night, we pass a group of teenagers arguing about which Mario Kart’s “Rainbow Road” level is hardest.

 
Rainbow Street at night

Extra spicy cat who tolerated Jason but did not like me

Florida Water

The first time I remember hearing of Florida Water was in high school when I was reading Gone With the Wind. Scarlett recalls how her mother has told her the only gifts a lady can accept from a suitor are flowers, candy, and perhaps a volume of poetry or a small vial of Florida Water. I didn't know if it was a tonic, perfume, or something you ate, but I figured it came in a cool glass vial.

I was partially right. Turns out, Florida Water is an American version of Eau de Cologne, basically, created (or at least trademarked) in 1808 by a New York perfumer, Robert Murray. I've never smelled either, but apparently they're similarly scented: unisex, citrusy. The major differences being that Florida Water uses orange (not lemon) for its citrus, and has a spicer scent, thanks to the addition of cloves and other ingredients.

Murray & Lanman’s Florida Water. Boston Public Library, CC 2.0.

Since its patent and marketing in the early 1800s, Florida Water has been used as a cologne, or a toilet water added to your daily bathing routine. Just before 1900, it was advertised as "The Richest of all Perfumes." Today, you can buy little plastic bottles of it in such high-toned establishments like Walgreens.

On a cooler note, Florida Water is used in witchcraft. Voodoo, Wicca and neo-Paganism, Santeria . . . many different sects of witchcraft use Florida Water in their rituals. Predominantly it's used for purification, but can have lots of applications. According to Lilith Dorsey of Voodoo Universe, Voodoo practitioners also use it during possession trance and for consecration, and Santeria practitioners use it for banishing and attracting rituals.

The witches I know use Florida Water kind of like a quartz crystal: it's a one-stop shop for purification, consecration, or a little positive pizazz. Like The Hood Witch suggests, it's great for purifying a new tool, crystal, or magickal element you bring into your practice. (Usually I just toss some salt on whatever I'm purifying and say something like "Hey, any bad shit vibes on this have to get the fuck outta here," but it's also cool to be intentional.)

Hey witch, I'm talking to you: neither way is wrong. You do you, boo.  

Bex suggests we make Florida Water as a witch/craft way to house-warm my new home. Making your own Florida Water is out of the question for some folks due to cost alone. You need a ton of supplies, and like half of them are niche things you won't have an easy time getting ahold of unless you live in a weirdo Mecca like Seattle. (I can't find an answer on how many witches live in Seattle, but one article estimates there may be 10,000 practicing witches living in New York. New York City has over 8 million residents; Seattle has just over 724,000. I wonder about the scalability of that estimate, because just over 1,000 practicing witches in Seattle seems LOW. I mean, have you hung out in Ballard or Capital Hill?)

Some recipes are quite simple, like the Ritual + Vibe recipe that relies heavily on essential oils instead of whole plants. Salt Publishing House uses more fresh or dried herbs, but is pretty basic. Instead, we use a recipe more akin to the one The Hood Witch uses, full of herbs and flowers and oils and vodka. So much vodka. Bex picks a date 2 weeks away from our planning session to give us time to collect everything we need.

Bex has some of the nicest handwriting I've ever seen.

I go to Dandelion Botanical Company in Ballard to get my half of the supplies on a lunch break. The woman behind the counter is at first really confused and then really excited as I tell her what I'm making. She's never heard of Florida Water, and as she's using an old fashioned scale to weigh out jasmine flowers and cedar and clove buds I tell her I'll bring her a vial if it turns out. Back at work, I eat an orange, carefully wrapping up the peel in Saran Wrap to bring back home to dry.

In this whole bid to be more intentional in my practice, I clear my new house's countertop space, laying out candles and dishes and crystals. I fill half the dishes with ingredients, and when Bex arrives she fills the other half with hers. My kitchen smells like an apothecary, dusty and green and kind of like hay. I like it. Bex opens the vodka and I hate the sharp smell of the alcohol.

We had like 4 more bottles of Vodka off camera.

We get the biggest pot I have (Jason's double boiler) and set it up on my gas-burning stovetop. Bex is in charge here, telling me what to add and I ferry ingredients to her like a happy little Igor. Five cups of vodka go in as a base, but we have the heat up too high and it cooks off too quickly so we have to add some water. Sage. Rose petals. Five cloves. All added in and stirred clockwise while envisioning purity and cleansing and light.

(A note about directions in witchcraft: clockwise or doesil is the direction you turn to raise energy, for positive spellwork, and to build. Counter-clockwise or widdershins is the direction you turn for banishing work.)

This pot isn't big enough, but it's our only option so we keep adding ingredients. I chop up sweetgrass into tiny little needles, relishing the beautiful sweet scent of it. I need a mortar and pestle but since I don't have one we just mash things with the back of a spoon or knife handle as needed. I'm sure it's fine.

The pink rose petals eventually blanched white and clear.

I remember being a kid, and together with my brother and the neighbor kids we'd pick the best-smelling plants we could find and add them to the stone birdbath in our backyard. Dad always got so mad that we "put a bunch of trash in the birdbath," but he didn't get it. Us kids talked about how if we could just bottle it and sell it before it turned bad, we'd make a million dollars because it smelled that good. So sweet and earthy and kind of spicy and very green.

Cooking Florida Water smells like that.

While it simmered, then cooled, Bex got out the bottles she had brought. They were too narrow-necked for all of the ruffage, so we poured the concoction into two big Mason jars I had, half for each of us. You can strain it right away and have Instant Florida Water TM, but Bex suggested waiting a traditional moon-cycle before straining the water into our bottles. You put the jar in a dark closet or at the back of a shelf, turning once a day to shake up the ingredients and think purifying thoughts at. You can bring it out at night to sit on a windowsill so it can soak up the moonlight, too.

Even after filling two large jars, we had leftover water and bits of flora. It felt too important to just dump down the garbage disposal, of course, but we weren't sure what to do with the extra. (Like, important, but not consecrated host important. Worthy of respect, but not fanatically so.) We take the pot of leftover Florida Water outside and pour it and the herbs at the base of a rose plant in my backyard. We'll have to wait for summer to see if it grows special with this magickal food.

I wait almost the full month before deciding it was close enough and decant my Florida Water into its pretty bottle. It smells like it did when cooking, but stronger, like long-brewed tea. I strain the water, which is now cola-brown, into the bottle, spilling quite a bit. I don't know how commercial Florida Water is clear. Does the process only use essential oils, or is there some very fine straining process? It's pretty in the sunlight, though. When I use it in a ritual bath, my skin will smell like tea and a summer 25 years ago.

Europe Trip - Paris, Day 2 (20 June 2018)

Today is our only full day in France, and we're going to see as much of it as we can. Kae has booked us a bus tour of Monet's gardens in Giverny, as well as a trip to Versailles to see the famous palace. We get up very early and walk the crooked, deserted streets, crossing the Louvre's courtyard. We walk very near the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel, and through the haze can make out the Arc de Triomphe de l'Etoile in the distance. We don't stop- the tour bus leaves promptly at 8:00 am.

Tour Eiffel in the far distance. On the way back from Versailles Kae woke me up just as we drove right next to it so I could see it up close.

This statue of Voltaire had been defaced with red paint and the words VOLTAIRE FUCK

Statue guardian on a bridge over the Seine

Entering the Louvre's courtyard

The Louvre

Ho. 

Our tour guide is a lovely, petite French woman named Aurielle; her coworker will repeat the same information in Spanish for the few Spanish-speaking visitors on the tour. Aurielle tells us we can identify her in the crowds if we "look for my beautiful orange flag with the fleurs." Actually, it's a hideous orange print from the 1970s, but at least it's easy to find in a sea of other tour guide flags. She has a great voice, and almost perfect command of English. The only mistake she will make is when she tells us we will be able to see Monet's famous chickens. She laughs and then corrects herself, saying she means "kitchen," and that she gets those words confused. When Kae and I visit, we do, indeed, see chickens.

Claude Monet is one of history's most famous painters. Born in 1840, he founded the Impressionist movement; and together with his friends Renoir, Pissaro, Courbet, and Sisley eschewed the formal and traditional salons that "real" artists sought to exhibit through to instead create independent exhibitions. The term "Impressionism" was coined after Monet's 1872 painting Impression, Sunrise which depicts a wonderfully splotchy and non-literal harbor scene in cool blues, dotted almost dead-center with a red-orange sun. Unlike the formal and figurative works before them, impressionist works sought to capture the mood, the feeling, the colors, and perhaps the energy of a scene without being bogged down in details or realism. They chose real subjects, painting en plain air instead of from references or memory. They used pure, bright colors, and bold strokes of brushes and palette knives.

I don't have a favorite Monet painting. Maybe like the genre itself, I love the colors, the dreamy focus and the mood of his paintings, but I don't hone in on a single detail (or favorite, in this case.) I like a lot of them, but don't really love one of them. If I could own any Monet painting, though, it would be Grainstacks in the Sunlight, Morning Effect from 1890, but I would want it to have the slightly different composition of Stacks of Wheat, End of Day, Autumn. The colors in Morning are better, but the smaller haystack on the left really bothers me- it's too close to the edge of the painting and makes me anxious for some reason.

I've seen the original of this painting at the Museum of Fine Art in Boston- they have a large Monet wing. Being inside the wing of his paintings feels like being held within a pastel Easter egg.

See? Better composition. That small stack isn't trying to sneak off anywhere. 

It's beautiful here in Normandy. The fields are gently broken up by low trees. Kae and I alternate sleeping with talking about her ex-husband and my ex-wife. We compare battle-scars in a land that has endured battles much worse than our divorces.

Aurielle talks about the seedier elements of Monet's personal life: about his supposed affair with a family friend named Alice, who he eventually married after the death of his first wife Camille, and Alice's estranged husband. Monet had been living with Alice (and her 6 children, and his own two sons by Camille) for several years in 1883 when, on a train between Vernon and Gasney, he looked out the window and was enraptured by the pastoral beauty of Giverny in Normandy. That year they began renting the house that Monet would eventually buy in 1890. He spent over 40 years of his life here in this house, fussing over his gardens and painting.

Finally, we arrive in Giverny, first cutting through the little town. I look out the window and down to the grasses pushed up against the road. I see a small black form dart, and the weeds ripple: a mouse, or perhaps a martin has dashed away from our bus. We pull into the parking lot across from Monet's estate, and as a group walk through a tunnel under the road to pop up like a little group of groundhogs on the other side. Aurielle checks us in through a gate, and first shows us Monet's garden. For a garden that looks effortlessly wild, Monet put so much thought into plantings, placement, seasons, and color. He planted a variety of bulbs and seeds, and in such a way that the blooms would appear from early spring to late fall, so he always had a variety of seasonal flowers to reference. And he planted in blocks of color: this patch in pink hues, and another in yellows. We see his famous rose-way, that walk of high-arching trellises for his roses to climb - his yellow house and its green shutters in the distance. 

It's too early in the season for the roses to have covered the trellises in the rose-way

Being here makes me think of so many of the women in my life. Of my mama, who is a plant witch even if she doesn't know it, who turns our front porch into a riotous oasis every spring. Of Maggie, who I think must be a fae-folk, with her enchanted garden and ability to capture the fragility of flowers and fleetingness of light in both film and paint. Of Desiree, my sister-witch, who quietly infuses every room she enters with color. Of Liz, who bought a print of Monet's water lilies to beautify the girls' dressing room of our high school theatre. Of Kae, who I so desperately wanted to be my sister in law, and who I can't stop loving even if she broke my brother's heart. Time is a color here, and it has a weight.

Aurielle takes us to Monet's incredibly famous water garden. After about 10 years in Giverney, Money was able to buy the land across the road from his house. He dug a pond (which he would later enlarge) in irregular shapes and curves inspired by his love of Japanese art and design. 

It looks just like the paintings: winding, overhung with plants crowded right up to the edge of the water. Huge patches of lily pads float on the surface, but I only see a single flower bud here and there. The garden is full of visitors, of course, even this early in the day. The paths around the pond are narrow, but people still stop dead in the middle of them to take photos. You have to constantly watch out for selfie sticks being swung around by idiots tourists. I try to remember that everyone here is just wanting to make memories, to have the experience they want, and that my wants aren't more important than theirs. But mostly I just want to shake half of them because I think with about 10 percent more consideration on their part, 100 percent of us would have a better time here. 

After Aurielle is done talking about the water gardens, she releases us for about an hour to explore by ourselves. It's not nearly enough time to see everything, especially with the long lines beginning to form already to explore Monet's house. Kae and I cross the road back to the Clos Normand (the flower garden by his house) and walk up a few rows. We debate going into his home to see the quirky interior, including his famously yellow dining room and blue sitting room. The lines are out the door and down the porch though, and we'd rather be outside or at least moving. We walk through the far end of the garden together, and find the chickens (not kitchen) Aurielle told us about. Their soft chortling clucks are comforting. I have to use a bathroom, and the restrooms we find end up being my first experience with a Turkish toilet. It's a modified pedestal squat toilet, but still I have no real idea how to use it. I wonder how elderly or mobility disabled people use these. 

We go through the gift shop, full of anything that would hold still long enough to print a Monet painting onto. Umbrellas, china, towels, stationary. I buy postcards, and we try to buy water from a vending machine but it's broken. We have enough time to walk down a small country road that runs behind Monet's grounds. We talk about coming back here, staying in a small B&B along this road, walking the town at our own pace. A dog follows us along his entire fenceline, barking. Poppies, gladiolas, and other flowers bloom against pale walls. 

Escargot

We have to get back on the bus because we're heading to lunch. Our destination is a short ride: Le Moulin de Fourges. The grain mill was built in 1790, in the architectural style of Marie Antoinette's provincial hamlet. It's absolutely beautiful - we walk across a wide drive, over a bridge that spans the small river powering the mill. The mill ground grain until the Industrial Revolution, when it fell into disuse and disrepair. In 1946, a young man fell in love with the property and turned it into an inn, and in the last 2 decades the mill has seen greater restoration and renovation projects.

A panorama showing the main waterway, spill gates, and mill

The tour group is dining together in the restaurant, a large building with low ceilings and wood beams. Kae and I make a bee-line for a back table in the corner, but we're quickly joined by a family, a couple, and a woman traveling alone. The couple and woman are from South America, and they are very patient as I pull up as much high school Spanish as I can to pass them the water, the bread, and ask if they enjoyed the garden. The family is from Texas: a mom, her two pre/teen daughters, their grandmother, and grandma's "new boyfriend." Apparently they started dating only a short time before the family took this trip, but he came with. He and the grandmother seem nice. The mom makes a big deal about her daughters being surly, but I think they're just being teenagers. They're young, in a country where they don't speak the language, and hanging out with inscrutable adults who they likely equal parts want to impress and kill. No skin off my ass if they want to play on their phones or just sit quietly at lunch. 

It's the mom of the group who, by the end, I wouldn't mind pushing in the Seine. She talks over everyone, in a sweet "I'm showing you I know what you mean!" kind of way that really just brings the conversation back to her. She makes a big fuss about her girls not liking the traditional food we're offered (hey, I get it, I don't dig on a lot of ingredients either, but I'm not telling our server that.) Kae makes best friends with the staff immediately, both because she speaks French and because she's charming as fuck. Kae gently, apologetically reminds them she ordered a vegetarian option, and they are happy to bring her one. Texas mom purses her lips and harangues the staff until they bring the same for one of her daughters, who looks to be quietly dying of embarrassment. 

But what really makes Kaelah and I hit each other under the table and cough uncomfortably is when the mom starts talking about college. Kaelah is going to grad school in Texas, so she tries to relate to the family on that level, talking about cities they've all been to and the schooling system. Fine. The mom starts talking though about how hard it is for her daughters to get into college in Texas, because apparently Texas colleges reserve a certain portion of seats for "minorities." And as the mom goes on to say, her daughters get top grades and participate in all kinds of special after school activities, but they have less of a chance of getting in to a top school because some of those seats that should be for high-achieving kids are, well...reserved for kids who don't achieve as much as her daughters. Not fine. I think we leave the table after suggesting her kids try for colleges closer to their summer home (but not before I eat both my and Kaelah's desserts.)  

We walk across the bridge and back to the bus. I get so motion sick, I can barely hold a conversation with poor Kae, and have to keep my eyes closed while we drive. Aurielle tells us more about our next and final destination of the day, the place I've most wanted to see today: Versailles. You'll have to read Day 2, Part 2 for that.