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Published: August 16th 2017
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When planning a trip to see the house and gardens of Claude Monet in Giverny, it is definitely best to buy the 10.50€ tickets online a day or more ahead of time.
http://giverny.org/gardens/fcm/ticket/. You can print them yourself, or if you don't have a printer available like us, you can pick them up at any fnac outlet.
http://www.fnactickets.com/listePointVenteEdito.do. With advance tickets you can ignore the 1 to 2 hour lineup and walk straight in through the Advance Ticket and Group Entry.
You can reach Giverny from Paris by train for 14.70€ from the Gare St Lazare station. We rode on the 8:19AM train, choosing forward-facing seats upstairs on the right side for the best views, arriving in Vernon at 9:05. Right outside the station door you will have various shuttle services waiting to drive you the 20 minutes or so to Giverny. The main choice is a return ticket on the bus for 10€ or on the little train for 8€. We chose the train; not ONLY to save a couple euro, but also because it zig zags through the streets of Vernon first, with a recorded tour commentary in both French and English.
We arrived in the parking
lot at Giverny right at the opening time of 9:30 and followed various directional signs to take you along paths to see a sculpture bust of Monet in the forest, through the little village of Giverny to Monet's tomb next to his church, etc., and of course, a sign to direct you to his house and famous gardens. Their website gives you the details and history here
http://giverny.org/gardens/fcm/visitgb.htm. And if you have ever enjoyed any of Monet's paintings, you will probably recognize some of the scenes in my photos. Remember to scroll right to the bottom of this page to see all of the photos. And if you click on one, it will enlarge to full screen and you can then click through to each additional image.
After a couple of hours in the gardens, they were filling up so much with tourists that it became nearly impossible to take any more photos. I HIGHLY recommend getting there right at opening time, not only for the photography but to better enjoy the serenity of the gardens. We left the gardens finally to get into a 20 minute lineup to walk through his home and studios. They have filled the
walls with replica paintings to try and match photos of the time. The house viewing ends in a huge studio area that he used for his famous giant Lilies paintings in the Musée de l'Orangerie, now being used as a gift shop. As usual, we ate our packed lunch and wine on one of the many benches throughout the village. There is no food allowed directly within the gardens. We took a walk through the village afterwards, where you will find a few outdoor restaurants and numerous galleries from a variety of present day impressionist painters. We also stopped in at his little church and saw his, and his family's, tomb just on the right side of the church.
We met the little train back in the parking lot at 1:40PM and enjoyed another little tour of Vernon, different sights than on our way out, and were dropped at the station nearly an hour ahead of the next train to Paris Gare St Lazare at 2:53. After buying our tickets we walked outside to a little restaurant just a few feet away to enjoy an after-lunch café. The train was quite full going home but we managed to get
forward-facing seats upstairs on the shady left side for nice views on our way back to Paris.
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