I have always wanted to see the cliffs at Etretat. Not only did Monet paint them in one of his greatest series of paintings, but Courbet and Delacroix have also painted the cliffs. On our way back to Paris at the end of our stay, we decided it wouldn’t be too much of a detour, so we went.

I have to say that despite a jaw-numbing gale blowing sleet sideways into our ears, it was as beautiful a place as it looks in the paintings.

More photos from Giverny. We snuck around back to see the garden through the much less obstructive chain link fence.

This is the front section of gardens at Monet’s residence in Giverny. Jen and I stopped in Normandy for a look at the cliffs at Etretat (more in another post) on our drive from Dinan to Paris, and Giverny was along the way, so we stopped to see what there was to see in the off-season. The grounds are quite extensive, taking up about 2 full town blocks of space, with the famous lily ponds across the street in an enclosed area. Since there was really no one around–it being New Year’s Day after all–we felt free to trespass to our hearts’ content, sneaking around the back of the ponds to the area much less covered by fence and trees and hoisting each other up to see over fences and walls. Overall, the gardens looked as you would expect in winter: boring. It was still fun knowing that old Claude was puttering around in these very spaces, fighting his failing vision and creating some astonishing works.