Castles · Tour

Private Versailles and Giverny, with Monet's Flowering Calendar

Two estates in a day, privately, and one small thing that turns Giverny from a walk into a reading: the Claude Monet Foundation hands out a calendar of what flowers in which month, and the guide will point out what you are looking at against it. Come in June and you see a different garden from the one in September, and the calendar tells you which. The day starts with pickup at a meeting point you choose in Paris and a 45-minute drive to Versailles. Tickets are included and the guide is yours alone, so the crowds and the larger groups are not your problem. Inside are the State Apartments of Louis XIV and the Hall of Mirrors; outside, the gardens and their 55 fountains. The drive to Giverny takes an hour, through the countryside that produced the paintings. Lunch there is at your own expense. At Monet's house you skip the line. The Clos Normand flower gardens come first, then his studio, then the water gardens with the Japanese bridge and the lily pads from the Water Lilies series. Afterwards there is time in the village itself: flowered houses, art galleries, cafés. Transport is private and luxury, both ways.