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Vernon, France


This will be at least a four-part post on visiting the stunning estate of Claude Monet.  This post will contain a lot of different information on visiting the area.

Visiting Giverny has been on my wish list for a long time, but I have been wary of the  huge crowds that make the daily pilgrimage to Monet's gardens and home.  In order to have a bit of peace and hopefully the ability of taking photos of flowers minus the hundreds of tourists next to them, I decided to stay in the area overnight and visit the property after 3pm, when most of the visitors would be starting to make their way back to Paris.

There are plenty of tour companies offering day trips to Giverny, which is a great option for those who want a zero hassle trip of being picked up from and delivered back to their hotel in Paris.
We opted for a trip completely on our own, which is really easy.


 I purchased our train tickets on Raileurope.com and printed them out at home.  We got to the Saint Lazare train station (located a few blocks from Galeries Lafayette on Blvd. Haussmann) about  30 minutes before our train was scheduled to depart.

There are large screens with the track assignments for each train, be aware that trains are usually given a track number just a few minutes ahead.


 There are two levels on the train and we opted for the upstairs, which was not as busy.


 Once in Vernon we took this tunnel to the other side of the tracks,



 and followed these painted steps to the shuttle.


This is the shuttle to Monet's Home and Gardens (about 6km away).  The shuttle costs 10 euro (tickets purchased on board) and it leaves every 15 minutes or so.  A taxi would cost about 20 euro.


We took a taxi to a lovely Bed and Breakfast since we were staying in the area overnight.

 After enjoying some rest at the B&B we decided to make our way towards the final destination, which was the estate of Claude Monet in Giverny.


We covered the 2.5 km  distance in about 30 minutes stopping along the way to take photos of the beautiful area.
















Since we were getting hungry and had some time to use up (I did not want to enter the estate while most of the day trippers were still there), we decided to have a late lunch.

The restaurant options in the area are fairly slim, we stopped at Restaurant Baudy since, well to be honest, it was right there and I had really no idea if there will be any other options closer to the estate.  By the way, there really aren't.




We got a nice table outside and enjoyed fresh salads which happened to be as huge as at The Cheesecake Factory.  In all my years of visiting France I have never encountered such massive portions of food, I soldiered through but finished only half of my chicken salad.  It was decent but nothing I would go out of my way for, I guess when you are the only game in town you don't really need to make a great effort.


After our lunch we made our way to the gardens.

One more thing for this odds and ends post on the area: there is this beautiful Old Mill Bridge in Vernon that is really worth seeing.  We stopped by on the way to the train station as we were returning to Paris.


Joanna


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