Monet's Garden

Monet's Garden

We decided that over the three weeks we were in Paris we would do a trip out of town each week. The second week we went to Monet's Garden at Giverny. Again we went early to avoid the heat and the crowds and this worked well. We took the train from St Lazare Station to Vernon which takes about 45 minutes. Then we caught the bus to Giverny - some 7 kilometres away.

Monet moved his family to Giverny in 1883 and started developing the garden. He bought some adjoining land later and dug out the lily ponds. He painted many of his famous pictures here, many of the garden and of course the lily ponds. The gardens fell into some disrepair after Monet died in 1926. The house was bombed badly in WW2. It was inherited by the State in 1977 and restored, over the next 10 years, to it's former glory. Monet's paintings were used as a guide to how it used to be. It is now open to the public for 7 months of the year.

There were some lilies out - I think it was the start of their season. Above is the famous Japanese style bridge that Monet painted a lot. Even though it was early in the day there were still lots of people doing the same thing as us.

         It was possible to find parts to sit and watch around the ponds where it felt very peaceful.

                                  It must take a lot of maintenance to keep it at the level it is.

I was a bit disappointed it was not possible to walk along most of the smaller pathways in the large garden. I know it's for it's preservation but I would have liked a closer look.

By late morning it was getting very hot and the crowds were much denser so we left feeling that we'd been there for the best part of the day and enjoyed it a lot - especially the pond area.

A few days later we visited the Orangerie in Paris where Monet's famous water lilies paintings are. These paintings are magnificent and were really brought to life for us by having seen where they were painted so recently. They are 2 metres high and cover 91 metres end to end and are displayed in two rectangular galleries. The Orangerie was renovated in the early 2000s to allow more light and this has been a great success. There is no sky or horizon in the paintings which creates an illusion of the gardens being continuous.
Under the water lilies in the Orangerie there is a collection of paintings from Paul Guillame which is also well worth seeing. It includes paintings by Renoir, Cezanne, Matisse, Picasso and more and is not nearly as crowded as at the D'Orsay where most go to see Impressionist paintings.
A hint we were told is that the queue for the Orangerie is always less than at the D'Orsay. We went at lunchtime on a Saturday and were pleasantly surprised that there was no queue. You can buy a joint entry ticket for the Orangerie and the D'Orsay which means that you can enter a prepaid ticket entrance at the D'Orsay and avoid a lot of the queues there. You have to visit the D'Orsay within 4 days of buying the joint ticket. That worked well for us.