One of the disappointments in visiting Claude Monet’s last home and gardens in Giverny, is the realization that none of his works can be found there. However, until the 31st of October, 2011, there is a near-by remedy.

Visitors in Giverny should not miss the exceptional exposition of a selection of paintings from the collection of the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts. It is currently showing at the Giverny Museum of Impressionism, and runs there until October 31st, when it will migrate to Barcelona, the next stop in a world tour.

This impressive exhibition consists of 73 paintings, mostly from the inner core of Impressionist painters (Renoir, Monet, Sisley, Pissarro, Morisot, Caillebotte and Degas). It also includes exceptional works of precursors (Corot, Millet, and Manet), as well as of post-Impressionists (including Gauguin, Bonnard and Toulouse-Lautrec).

Stellar may be too weak a term to describe its breath-taking array of first class Renoirs, and some of the best works of Monet, Sisley and Pissarro. Its presentation of 20 Renoirs of such outstanding quality sends one searching for Rubens or Titian to find an oeuvre of comparable value. Viewing Monet’s The Cliffs at Etretat demonstrates how perfectly inadequate reproductions can be in conveying the work of an artist. The light from this painting leaps at one’s eye directly from the canvas.

Interspersed with the exceptional are less exalted works, underlining the sublime quality of the whole. Those of Boldoni and Stevens are especially appealing for their glimpses of ordinary life and attractive rendering of fabrics.

We regularly receive emails from visitors in France who relate they are lost in trying to find information on how to get from one place in France to another. The latest asked us for help in getting from Compiegne to Pierrefonds by bus. On such occasions we refrain from advising them to book one of our private tours in France, and instead we suggest they seek the Office de Tourisme (official tourism office) of the community they are trying to reach.

Finding the official tourism office of each community is easy: search ‘tourism office + the name of the community’ and it will normally appear in the first returns. If you have a red Michelin guide for France, the telephone number of each official tourism office is listed in the first paragraph for each community that is listed.

Most official tourism offices in France have at least one person who speaks English, and their offices are a gold-mine of information on how to get to and from their community and near-by points, using public transportation. They also provide information on the opening hours and fees for visiting places of interest in their community. They further inform you about special events, such as annual iris or cartoon festivals. If you ask for it, they will mail or email you a wealth of documentation including maps and brochures, frequently in English, that you can then study at your leisure.

Don’t bother asking them for a specific recommendation for a particular business, whether it is a restaurant, hotel, or haberdasher. They can not be seen to favor one establishment versus another. But you can ask them for a list of all of the establishments of a particular sort in their community, they will provide one. If, after receiving your list, you don’t know who to choose, consult us. If we know the establishments, we will inform you of our favorites. We have no compunctions about those.

Is Paris a good place to shop? It depends on what you seek. If you are looking for best value, there are many places in the world where you will get more for your money, such as in the USA. That there are often more choices in Paris (size, color, model, etc.) does not alter the fact that French-made products are often cheaper to buy abroad than they are in France, as odd as that may seem. It has to do with the cost of doing business in France, and the high cost of French social legislation.

If, however, you want to indulge yourself in the sheer luxury of upscale shopping, then Paris is a definite contender. It is one of the true originators of luxury shopping, and that has been refined over the centuries. Few places are as enjoyable in which to shop, and nowhere in the world matches its shopping infrastructure. I am not referring to sheer numbers of shops, but to the variety of settings in which shops are presented.

The western world’s first fashion center emerged in Paris, partly a result of Marie Antoinette’s patronage of Rose Bertin’s dress shop near the Palais Royale in the 18th century. That gave birth to the rue St. Honoré as the very first fashion street, where purveyors of fashion products competed with each other in the fine art of separating passers-by from their money. They are still honing their craft, with due diligence.

The Palais Royale expanded that by creating a quadrangle of shops (intermingled with gambling houses, brothels, cafes and restaurants). The unique architectural feature was an arcade that allowed shoppers to peruse shop windows, no longer concerned with the elements. Today it is home to such icons of fashion as Stella McCartney.

Under Napoleon’s reign, the rue de Rivoli, with its own arcades, complemented the near-by and parallel rue St. Honoré. During the 19th century, when England’s influence in France waxed, it became a fashion mecca especially for British visitors in the City of Lights.

Paris as a center for shopping expanded further with the development of its covered passageways, the fore-runner of the modern shopping mall. It acquired many kilometers of them between 1800 and 1925. Typically, they were galleries with glass ceilings that perpendicularly connected two parallel streets, running through the middle of a block. Most of them were built in the 2nd and 9th districts, just north of the Palais Royale, and some survive even today.

Several of the covered passageways are architectural gems, and many are filled with interesting shops offering unusual and long-forgotten wares (quills, astrolabes, music boxes, etc.). Others are very fashionable, such as Vero-Dodat passageway that houses one of Christian Louboutin’s shops. Near-by, the avenue Etienne Marcel has evolved as the most recent fashion street in Paris, with its accent on youth and hip fashion.

Simultaneous with the development of its covered passageways in the 19th century, Paris gave birth to the department store, the first of which was Le Bon Marché, born in 1853. Samaritaine followed later in 1869. Bon Marché is still going strong as a chic, up-market left bank department store. Its right bank competitors, Printemps and the Galerie Lafayette, do not lag, and their location behind the Garnier Opera house continued the evolution and expansion of the right bank as the main shopping area of Paris.

There are, of course, other worthy shopping areas: the St. Germain district in the Left Bank, and, to a lesser degree, the avenue Victor Hugo near the Arc de Triomphe. If you are ready for ruin, today’s killer fashion street in Paris is the avenue Montaigne. It is where to go when you are ready to drop thirty thousand euros on a gown—or more. I recall a wedding dress being readied at Christian Dior with a price tag over three hundred and fifty thousand euros.

You do not need to be a billionaire to enjoy a shopping tour of Paris. You only need to have the energy to explore its fascinating shopping infrastructure. If you would like to be taken in hand and have it shown to you, consider ordering our Paris Shopping Tour: http://www.parisluxurytours.com/Paris_Tours_shopping.php.