Giverny

Giverny takes 1 day to see: Claude Monet's house and gardens, with the water-lily pond and the Japanese bridge the painter depicted over and over in the last three decades of his life, are the sole real reason to visit. April-October is the only possible time: the gardens close all winter. It's mid-to-high priced for such a tiny village, with a paid entrance to the house-museum. Monet lived there for 43 years and designed the gardens himself as a living canvas, and today the entire village -barely 500 residents- lives almost exclusively off the tourism generated by those two hectares of flowers.