Monet’s Garden: Giverny

Today we’ve been to Giverny to visit the house and garden where the artist Claude Monet lived, painted and gardened. I didn’t have great expectations, thinking that it might be dull at the end of October. However, I was pleasantly surprised. It was stunning, with a wide variety of plants in all the colours under the sun. I can only imagine how wonderful it must be in spring and summer.

The gardens are in two parts. The first, nearer the house, is the Clos Normand, with long lines of flower beds, full of brightly coloured blooms.

The second part is the Water Garden, made famous by Monet’s paintings of water lilies. He took his inspiration from Japan for much of the oriental planting here, and the green painted bridges. There’s a fast running stream running around the water gardens and the huge water lily pond is in the middle.

The gardens were quite busy with lots of American and Asian people. We weren’t surprised by this, after seeing 5 coaches in the car park, but we were slightly disappointed not to have it to ourselves. 😜

We patiently waited wait for gaps between the groups of people, enjoying the views and looking at the unusual plants. Eventually, we managed to get some photos with nobody else in them. 😆

The reflections of the trees in the water were wonderful, especially the autumn coloured foliage. These are probably my favourite photos of the gardens.

After meandering through the gardens, we visited Monet’s house, which contains his collection of Japanese prints and pottery cats. It was quite interesting but busy, so we didn’t linger for long.

When we left the house and garden, we had a short walk around the village to find some geocaches. The first, which we didn’t find, was at the church where Monet and his family are buried.

We also came across a memorial to 7 British airmen who were killed in 1944 when their Lancaster Bomber crashed in flames south of the village.

Another of the caches was by a sculpture garden. The artwork was very quirky! The good thing about geocaching is finding places like this, away from the main tourist paths. Giverny is a pretty village and we passed some beautiful old buildings.

Now we’ve moved on to an aire in Saint-Germer-de-Fly to meet up with Mike and Gail again. It’s our turn to cook dinner tonight and we’re attempting beef stroganoff in the van for the first time. I hope it works ok.🤞

Tomorrow we going to have a go at pickle ball before moving to be near Dieppe, ready for our ferry home on Sunday. I can’t believe the trip’s almost over. Nine weeks seemed such a long time when we set off, but it’s flown by!