Today we took a 45 minute train trip from Gare Saint-Lazare to Vernon (another fabulous 2€50 fare).

Off the train at Vernon Railway Station and we simply followed the crowds to the shuttle buses ready to take us to Giverny and Monet’s home and those famous gardens. The shuttle bus cost is €10 return and it takes the swarms of us to a car park about a 5-10 minute walk from the little village of Giverny and a step closer to all things Monet.

You are able to buy your tickets before you arrive and I would recommend doing this if the weather is fine and you are confident you can get there. The tickets are €12 each and they will get you into the gardens, Monet’s home and musee. We hadn’t bought ours and so had a bit of a wait in a slow long queue. On the up side we met a lovely woman who was sharing the gardens with her grandsons who were going back to school in 10 days. As the conversation often goes we talked about how long the flight from Australia to Europe and whether you could get a sleep on the plane.

The gardens are really lovely and I got lots of great ideas for our place, not sure how that will work out. But it was very busy and so it was hard to enjoy a peaceful walk along the meandering paths. So if you can get the earliest train from Paris, we arrived on the 11.00am train and it did feel like we were sharing this experience with everyone we knew and their friends 🤣.

The water lilies are beautiful, hopefully you can see them behind us in these photos. I guess that I was expecting more of them to be floating across the ponds, but I think we are at the end of the season. Regardless, I can imagine spending my days sitting alongside the pond painting and simply being. It was just delightful.

We decided as the queues were so long to get into the musee and Monet’s home that after we’d wandered through the gardens that we’d catch the shuttle back to Vernon and take a look at the town. It was a great decision.

Vernon is a town with an incredible history. From prehistoric times through to the French Resistence in World War II. Here’s a little excerpt that I found about the resistance movement.

The first Vernon Resistance group, known as ‘le Réseau’, were created in the first year of German oppression, 1940.  Led by Primary school teacher Louise Damasse it was part of the ‘Hector’ network. ‘Hector’ was originally set up in Granville in June 1940 with the British Intelligence Service (IS) and quickly spread across Calvados, Eure and Orne. Hector’s success was short lived.

One a terrible August day in 1941 Pierre Aussannaire, a Resistance recruiter born in Vernon and completely immersed in the Normandy and Paris networks, is captured on Gare Saint-Lazare railway platform in Paris with a bag of guns. Tragically an address book is also found.

The Old Mill of Vernon dates back to the 12th century and is the oldest structure in the area. It became well known thanks to Monet who painted it during his time in Giverny. Today there were a couple of artists sitting on the river banks painting the Mill and its surroundings.

Just near the mill is the Chateau des Tourelles. It was built around the same time in 1196, when Philip II of France was fighting against the King of England, Richard the Lionheart for possession of Normandy. Philip seized Vernon and made it a military base hence this castle. It isn’t open to the public but I understand that it is one of the few castles in France that is practically unchanged.

It’s been a fabulous holiday, tomorrow we head home. I hope you’ve enjoyed travelling with us.