Destination: Giverny, France

Bonjour!

Around this time last year, I made a visit to Giverny for the day, as means of visiting the famous gardens and house of Claude Monet, a nineteenth-century Impressionist painter who created some of the most beautiful, semi-abstract paintings ever (as I’d like to believe). Plus, it was a great opportunity to see what the region of Normandy had to offer: aside from the gorgeous Étretat on the coast, Giverny has got to be one of the iconic places in Upper Normandy.

Now, I had already visited Giverny prior to my visit last October– in fact, I did a day trip earlier that year in April during my first year as an assistante, even though I’d say that that day ended up being a bit rushed due to limited bus/train hours between Giverny and the small town I was working in. That October, however, I didn’t have to worry about transportation, for I was actually placed in a different town as a second-year assistante which was right next to Giverny itself! The towns were only five kilometers apart, so Monet’s gardens and house were easily accessible on foot.

That said, I took a weekend trip to Giverny with a few of the other assistantes with whom I was living that year: we visited in the afternoon, crossing the bridge over the Seine and entering the countryside. It was actually cloudy that day as we took the *not-so-amble* stroll through some overgrown weeds right next to the highway– we later found out that there was a pedestrian-bike path just above the weeds, to our embarrassment: of course, we took that the way back to our town.

We took almost two hours to make it over to Giverny– normally, it shouldn’t have taken us more than an hour, but again, we weren’t very direction-savvy and ended up missing the turn into town. We overshot by one kilometer, so we had to backtrack on the way. Looking back, I can’t believe how we were able to mess up with directions, because it was so straightforward from our town to Giverny– after all, it was literally just a single path with a slight left turn. Then again, we didn’t know under our circumstances (hadn’t thought about using Google Maps) and eventually, we made it.

*fyi* If you plan on visiting Giverny and aren’t keen on walking five kilometers from the nearest train station, there’s a shuttle service that departs from the station when in-season (March-October). Round-trip costs about 8€, and it’s efficient– in fact, I took it during my first visit. The things you have to know about, however, are that the hours of service can be quite limited (departing every 90 minutes to two hours) and that it drops you off about one kilometer away from Monet’s garden and house, so you’ll need to walk that last leg of the journey over.

Halfway through our walk, we stopped at a small cafe-boulangerie, since we hadn’t brought food for the trip– plus, it was about lunchtime and we thought that we would take a short pause and get something to eat. After some *overpriced* baguette sandwiches and viennoiseries (still touristy, even outside of Paris!), we continued our way to Giverny.

We arrived at the entrance of Monet’s house to get tickets at the door: you can also order them online (which I did the first time around), but from experience, I’ve found it to be more expensive, anyway. This time, I paid at the door, using my *secretly-expired* student ID card for a discounted price (6,50€) and before we knew it, we headed right inside.

Compared with my first visit to Monet’s gardens and house, the second time ended up being rather overcast, unfortunately. April was much warmer, and it made the teeming flowers in the garden all the more colorful and lovely.

However, there were still lots of people– admittedly, it was more crowded with tourists second-time around, for we were visiting around a busy time of year. The busiest times, however, are during the months of July and August, so we caught the end tail of the peak season. In comparison, April wasn’t so bad due to the gardens opening up just a month earlier when spring came around.

We spent our time divided between the three sites: Monet’s house, his garden, and water lily pond. After a quick group photo-op in front of the house (as well as witnessing a wedding photo shoot– not surprising at all!), we entered into the egg-washed yellow dining room before taking in the blue-tiled kitchen, two of which are probably the best rooms in the entire house. We also went upstairs to see the bedrooms of Claude Monet, his wife and children, and relatives: his room offered stunning views of the gardens from the window shutters, and I can’t imagine how Monet could’ve woken up everyday to such beautiful views…and not get tired of them!

After passing through the artist’s study room, which was filled to the ceiling with at least 60 of his artworks, we exited the house and spent the next time weaving through the lush flowerbeds, home to tulips, roses, sunflowers, and much more. There were a lot of bees and insects swarming around, so it was a matter of not getting too close to some of the flowers (no matter how beautiful they were!). We also heard pet roosters crowing off to the corner of the garden, which certainly made for that countryside feel.

Our final destination was the famous water lily pond: we went through an underground passageway before emerging from the other side of Monet’s estate. The water lily pond gardens were my favorite part of the visit– I especially loved the artist’s paintings of the lilies, plump and green, in contrast with the arching Japanese bridge in the background. Really, I can’t get enough of them. Unfortunately, when I’d visited in April, the water lilies weren’t quite in bloom yet, thereby a pinkish-red color that left me disappointed. This time around, there were mostly green ones, which left me happy and satisfied.

We finished our visit thereafter, returning to Monet’s flower garden and passing through the gift shop, where I bought a postcard as a souvenir. From there, we made our long walk back to our town, this time taking the paved path (and not getting lost this time!). It was late afternoon when we returned, tired but happy with the day trip to Giverny.

Thanks for reading– à bientôt!

 

— Rebecca