We had been talking about taking an overnight trip to somewhere close to Paris for a while when I read this article about Giverny in the New York Times. We decided to take the train up to Vernon (a neighboring town) and spend the night in Giverny before heading to the Maison de Claude Monet, where the painter lived from 1883 to 1926.
While we were excited about seeing the gardens that inspired so many of the paintings that we love, we did not expect to be so charmed by Giverny. It is a very small town and was filled with color from the flowers lining the sides of the roads and spilling out of gardens around every corner.
(this house was for sale, but we resisted the temptation to buy it)
After spending a peaceful night in Giverny, we enjoyed breakfast outside on our room's patio before heading over to Monet's gardens.
Though we walked right in when we arrived, the garden was already fairly crowded. We spent a few hours wandering around the garden and found a long line of people waiting to get in when we left shortly after noon. Giverny is an easy day trip from Paris, so it is not surprising that the middle of the day is the peak time for visitors.
We walked up and down the main street of the town, looking at restaurant menus to find a place to have lunch before returning to Paris. We ended up at Hôtel Baudy, where our lunches were very good, but the rose garden behind the restaurant was spectacular. We were a little jaded after Monet's garden but this garden was almost empty, which was a pleasant counterpoint to our experience earlier in the day.
