Disappointments: Every trip has them and the longer the trip, the more of them you can have without ruining the whole experience. Some disappointments are set up by unrealistic expectations, like my failure to find the Great Bustard (a big bird, for you non-birders) in Spain. Others occur because you took the advice of someone who has different ideas than you. Ronda, in Spain, was a major disappointment that we drove way out of our way to see based on guidebooks and the personal recommendation of someone we thought we could trust. Dinard and Honfleur in France are examples of disappointments caused simply because they were not what we wanted at the time.

So you learn to take every opinion and recommendation with a grain of salt. But what really stings is when you set up the disappointment for yourself.

Yesterday we went to Monet's gqrdens at Giverny. We had been there in September almost five years ago and wanted to see it in a different stage of bloom. Big mistake.

We arrived at midday, midweek in mid-June. The tmperature was approaching 90. The tour buses were disgorging their hordes. We braved the crowds, skipped the house and headed for the gardens. You couldn't exactly stroll because of the crush of people, each one seemingly intent on filling up the contents of their camera's memory card with a detailed documentary of the experience.

Digression: I ilke my digital camera because I don't feel like I'm wasting film processinig costs. But since I know what happens to snapshots, I still don't take that many photos. Everyone else in the world now takes 10 or 20 or 30 times as many photos as they did with their trusty Instamatic. And they expect me to wait while they do this, tying up traffic as a result. Enough is enough already and Al has developed the technique of damn the photographers, full speed ahead. After all, they can just delete the shot, right?

As if the crowds of adult tourists weren't bad enough, the French have added schoolchildren to the mix. Why, pray tell, is it necessary to schedule five busloads of children into the gardens at the same time? And who thought it was a clever idea to spread them out to sit all over the Japanese bridge while they did their sketching assignments?

All this might have been tolerable had the gardens been fantastic. Alas, they were nice but not that great. September is a wonderful time to see them as it turns out.

The two curmudgeons beat a retreat to the air-conditioned comfort of the car.