This day trip to Giverny is another example of my biggest piece of French advice. One thing I always tell people to do when visiting Paris is… leave it. *Gasp* Alright, alright, calm down. Paris is what it is (magic and romantic and covered in melted garlic butter). But the France outside of Paris is, believe it or not, even better.
This post will show you how to take one of the loveliest little day trips from Paris – to Claude Monet’s house, gardens, and waterlily pond in nearby Giverny, Normandy, France. Enjoy!
Why take a day trip to Giverny?
One such reason to leave Paris is for a day trip to Giverny, the tiny village that was once home to impressionist mastermind Claude Monet. Besides getting to tour his personal home, on a Giverny day trip you also get the chance to walk all through his flower-filled gardens, visit his painting studio, and walk around his waterlily pond. Like, the Water Lilies waterlily pond. Even for someone on the Microsoft Paint level of the artistic spectrum, it’s pretty impressive.
Is Giverny worth visiting?
If you love art history, fine art, or even just flowers and gardening, then Giverny is absolutely worth visiting. The property, gardens, and lily pond are meticulously well-kept and the experience of visiting is a quality one.
You get to see so much on a visit to Giverny and every month that it’s open offers something different in terms of blooms. You’ll also get to learn about Monet and his paintings and see how he lived.
Also read: The 8 Best Normandy Tours from Paris: D-Day in a Day
How long do you need at Monet’s Giverny?
The official statement is you need about an hour and a half to explore Monet’s house and gardens. I’d say that’s about right, though I’d probably make it 2 to 2.5 hours if you really like flowers or are visiting during a particularly busy time. The house and the paths are fairly tight and can get really crowded which means the going is slow.
If you like floral day trips, definitely check out my post on a day trip to Keukenhof–the world famous tulip gardens outside Amsterdam.
The history of Monet and Giverny
Claude Monet was the founder of French impressionist painting and, by all accounts, the original hipster. Impressionism was the 19th century art movement that emphasized light, movement, visible brush strokes, and blatant rule-breaking. Boy were those fancy pants art critics pissed at him.
He also, probably, played a major part in pairing a bushy beard with a beret—a style statement you still see so often in and around craft breweries and artisanal vegan donut/bicycle shops.
Move to Giverny
In 1883, Monet moved to Giverny (pronounced “Zzshee-vairrrrr-nee” – no really, listen), a picturesque village he once saw from a moving train. He lived in Giverny for exactly half his life, until he died in 1926.
It was while he lived here that he painted his entire Water Lilies series, the works he’s most famous for, even long after he developed cataracts.
Giverny and Water Lilies
Water Lilies is a series of around 250 oil paintings of the waterlily pond behind Monet’s house at Giverny. He was big into doing series work and has done many others including Haystacks, Rouen Cathedral, and Houses of Parliament.
Throughout his life and especially after moving to Giverny, Monet was obsessed with gardening, the same way I’m obsessed with not gardening (somebody feed me).
To help inspire his work, he diverted water from a nearby source and planted his own waterlilies. Monet was also obsessed with perfection. (He once destroyed 15 of his Water Lilies in a perfectionist rage I think we can all relate to.)
And he was obsessed with natural light, painting as fiercely and frantically as possible to capture an exact moment before it passed.
Where is Giverny?
Giverny is roughly an hour and 20 minutes west of Paris, about halfway between Paris and Rouen (the capital of Normandy).
How to get to Giverny from Paris
Because it’s such a popular day trip destination, Giverny is incredibly easy to get to from Paris. You can get here by train, car, or on an organized day tour.
Paris to Giverny by car
If you’ll have your own rental car, you can drive from Paris to Giverny in about 1 hour and 20 minutes. Once here, you’ll find tons of parking close to the main entrance (as long as you go early enough in the day to beat the crowds). Rent a car here if you need to.
GPS address: 84 rue Claude Monet, Giverny
Paris to Giverny by train
Taking the train from Paris is another reliable option. From Paris’s Gare Saint-Lazare (8th arrondissement), take the TER train to the Vernon-Giverny station. Once here, you can take the Giverny shuttle directly to the site. (Just follow the green signs.) The train ride takes about an hour, and the shuttle takes about 20 minutes. Check train schedules and rates here.
Day trip to Giverny on a tour
Taking a guided day tour to Giverny from Paris is going to be the absolute easiest method. For the love of lilies, sometimes it’s just best to let someone handle all the logistics for you!
These tours typically come with skip-the-line privileges, round-trip transportation, and knowledgeable guides who probably know their Phlomis pupurea from their Phlomis italica. Here are a few of the most popular Paris to Giverny day tours you can book:
There are actually tons of Giverny day tours from Paris, so take a look at the others in case one of them fits your plans better. See all Giverny tours here on Viator and here on Get Your Guide.
When is Giverny open?
Given its focus on flora, Claude Monet’s home and gardens (and pond) at Giverny are only open from April 1 to November 1 each year. During that time, the site is open daily from 9:30am to 6pm. Ticket sales open a month ahead of time (in March).
Also read: The 7 best things to do in the Loire Valley
When is the best time to visit Giverny?
As for when to go during that time, it really depends on what you want to see. Anytime you visit from April to November is going to be beautiful, but different times of the year offer different plants and flowers.
If you want to see waterlilies
Let’s be real here, you came for the waterlilies. As a species, waterlilies typically bloom between May and September. However, both the Giverny website and my tour guide said the lilies at Giverny don’t typically bloom until July. I visited in early June and still got to see many waterlilies that had already bloomed.
If you want to see wisteria
If July is out of the question for your day trip to Giverny, visit in May if you can. Monet’s famous green Japanese bridge is absolutely drenched in flowering purple wisteria during this time. Take a look at this image to see what I mean.
What other flowers to see at Giverny
Hey, maybe you don’t care about waterlilies or wisteria and get your jollies instead from holly-hocks or busy-lizzies. Worry not, there’s a Giverny flowering calendar for that so you can plan accordingly.
What to see on a day trip to Giverny
A day trip to Giverny is all about Claude Monet. You’ll visit his home and art studio, his extensive garden, and his famous water lily pond. You’ll see his chickens, his cows, and his jealousy-inducing collection of copper cookware. If you visit on one of the guided tours that includes this, you’ll also see his gravesite.
Monet’s house and studio
Monet lived at his house in Giverny for 43 years, the size of which defies everything I thought I knew about painting as a lucrative career path. Monet lived here with his lady-friend Alice and their combined eight children. I think the mystery of his eventual madness has solved itself.
Inside his house, you can tour his bedrooms, kitchen, art studio, bathroom, and many other places he’d be totally uncomfortable entertaining visitors.
Monet’s gardens
During your day trip to Giverny you’re free to wander throughout his garden, on strictly marked paths of course. There are 100 varieties of flowers and trees in the garden of the man who once said, “Apart from painting and gardening, I’m not good at anything.” So, if his success at painting is any indicator, I think you know what you can expect from his garden.
Monet’s pond
Monet’s pond is the highlight of his property and where you can find his famous waterlilies—in bloom or otherwise. Now every time you see a Water Lilies painting you can shout, “I’ve been there!” like I do.
You can circle the entire pond, walk across the Japanese bridge which features in many of his paintings, and see the little boat he used to paddle around in (before paddling around in little boats was cool, obviously).
How to get tickets to Monet’s Giverny
Ticket sales for Giverny open a month before the season does if you like to plan ahead. Reservations and pre-booked tickets aren’t mandatory, but they are recommended. Otherwise, you can wait in line at the site when you get here. (But lemme tell you, this place is popular. If you don’t have to wait in a line, I wouldn’t.)
If you plan to take the train to Giverny on your own, be sure to coordinate your ticket with the train times. (And note that the trains may not run as often as or at the intervals you’d think.)
When you book one of the organized Giverny day tours, admission tickets are already included so that’s one less thing you have to stress about.
You can find current rates and book your tickets here.
What to pack for a day trip to Giverny
Here are a just a few extra things to consider if you plan to visit Giverny:
Books to read for your day trip to Giverny
Along with guidebooks, here are some great options to help put everything in perspective—historically and biographically:
Where to find Monet’s Water Lilies paintings
Well, let me put it this way: I feel like I’ve never been to an art museum that doesn’t have one of Monet’s Water Lilies on display. In Paris, you can find them at:
- Musée de l’Orangerie – #8 on the Paris Bucket List
- Musée d’Orsay
- Musée Marmottan Monet
Outside of Paris, you can find them in these museums:
- Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna – Rome
- Philadelphia Museum of Art
- National Gallery – London
- National Gallery of Art – Washington, D.C.
- Metropolitan Museum of Art (the Met) and Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) – New York City
- Art Institute of Chicago
- Museum of Fine Arts – Boston
- Fine Arts Museum – San Francisco
- Neue Pinakothek – Munich
This is just a sampling though; see the full list here.
More info for your trip to France
Like this post? Have questions about taking a day trip to Giverny? Let me know in the comments below! Have fun in France!
Save this info, pin this image:
