Visiting Giverny is a do-able day trip for autistic children and my guide below gives you all the information you need to plan a perfect day trip for your neurodivergent family.
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Useful information to help you plan your autism friendly family visit:
The gardens are open for 8 months each year; from the 1st April until the 30th September.
The site is open until 6pm, with last admission at 5.30pm
The recommended visit duration is between 90mins and 2hr. I would agree with this, so realistically the latest time you’d want to enter is around 4pm.
You should arrive at the gate half an hour before your stated entry time as you will need to pass through a security check – there is no way of skipping this queue!
There are quite a few cafes and restaurants a short walk from the house.
You are not allowed to eat food inside Monet's garden, and there is no cafe on site. However there are plenty of open fields / grassy areas that would be suitable for a family picnic nearby.
THE BEST WAY TO BOOK FAMILY TICKETS TO GIVERNY
There are a number of ticketing options, and at first glance it can seem a little confusing. I have tried to simplify things for you below.
4 main Ticketing Choices:
1) Turn up and buy tickets from the admission office on the day
2) Book advance e-tickets directly through the official Foundation of Monet’s House and Garden website. This requires you to make own transport arrangements.
3) Use a third party tour operator to book combined entry and guided tour ticket starting and finishing at Monet’s House. You will also need to make your own transport arrangements.
4) Book skip the line tickets with a fully guided tour and coach transfers from central Paris.
If your children can cope with a group tour environment then option 4 is the simplest and most straightforward option, as the all the work is done for you.
Operators such as Viatour and GetYourGuide all offer day and half day trips from Paris.
However a group tour like this is not possible with our boys due to their sensory needs and unpredictable crowd anxiety. They would also find it extremely difficult to sit quietly and not ‘bother’ the other passengers on the bus (kicking chair, talking very loudly, stimming etc) and we feel it is unfair to expect this of them.
MY RECOMMENDATION:
Buy the tickets yourself directly with a partner website and book a slot for as early as you can get there
If your children have similar needs to ours then I recommend that you book your tickets directly on the official site and opt for no guided tour. If you are happy to commit to a date in advance, then pre-booking like this means you avoid the super long queues that form for the on the day tickets (up to and over a hour long).
Our boys best time of the day is the morning. They are up anytime from 5am(!) and they start to get tired by 3pm, so we were really keen to book tickets for the first slot at 9.30am.
This slot is also the least busy time for the site overall – with the shortest queues through security.
You can choose from the following sites to purchase your advance tickets:
- Via one of its partner platforms: SEE, Ticketmaster, Fnac or Vivaticket
We booked through Ticketmaster because I had a discount voucher, and it was completely straightforward. To visit the house and garden in April 2024 cost us:
€13 per adult ticket
€8.50 for Fred (students and children over 7)
Nothing for Charlie, children under 7 are free and don’t require a ticket
THINGS TO NOTE:
Pre-booked tickets are only valid for the date and time you have selected
Tickets are non-refundable and non-exchangeable
Tickets are single entry, once you leave you cannot enter again
You can print your Giverny Tickets or use the electronic version on your phone or tablet. The entrance for downloaded e-tickets is located at Sente Leroy, door n°1.
HOW EARLY IN ADVANCE CAN YOU BUY YOUR TICKETS?
Tickets generally go on sale around 3 months in advance, however this is not guaranteed.
If you want to visit in April (like we did) or May / June when the gardens are at their best it can be a bit trickier. You will need to check the official website regularly from mid January to see if the tickets have been released. This can get a bit stressy, particularly if you have a single date in mind. If you don’t want the bother or worry that you’ll forget and miss your date, you could choose to set up an alert with one of the third party websites like Ticketmaster.
After an anxious wait I finally bought our tickets from Ticketmaster about 6 weeks before we planned to visit. I had the option to either print them off or download them onto my phone.
THE BEST WAY TO TRAVEL TO GIVERNY WITH YOUR AUTISTIC CHILDREN
MY RECOMMENDATION:
HIRE A CAR WITH A DRIVER. After carefully thinking through all the options (see notes below) we decided that to best meet the boys needs AND enjoy the day ourselves we would need to hire a car with a driver.
Having read reviews from people who had had terrible experiences with rude drivers and cars not turning up etc… I did feel a little nervous about this. However using a Paris based taxi comparison site and I was able to find a driver with a 7 seater car that was not too expensive. He was a very nice man, and even sent a photo of the car and its interior to me so I could show the boys in advance. The cost for this personal door to door service was approx. 65 euros per person, admittedly on the pricier side but definitely worth it.
8 Reasons why booking our own car and driver was totally the right travel decision for our neurodivergent family:
We were picked up from the door of our apartment, so no stressful early morning transfers across Paris during rush hour.
It gave us longer to get ready in the morning!
We were dropped back to the front of the apartment in the afternoon. By then both us and the boys were exhausted. This protected all of us from the emotional stress of coping with public transport while feeling tired and anxious and carrying lots of luggage!
It was an extremely peaceful and relaxing journey - we all arrived totally calm and regulated - and dry!
The car was comfy and quiet which meant the boys were able to have a well-earned nap on the way home
You can only take one small backpack per person through security, which would have been difficult with the amount of stuff we needed to pack (we don’t as yet, ask the boys to carry their own bags). Having a car meant we could take exactly what we needed on the trip without worrying about whether we would be allowed in!
We felt totally comfortable leaving our belongings the car, knowing everything was safe and could be accessed later at lunchtime.
Having the car also meant we could pack our large paediatric buggy which was very helpful both in the garden and afterwards when walking to the restaurant.
OTHER TRANSFER OPTIONS:
ORGANISED GROUP TOUR TO GIVERNY HOUSE AND GARDEN (with Autistic Children)
If you have chosen to book an organised tour then obviously all you need to do is turn up to the coach point half an hour before departing. Please give consideration to the following factors below.
Departure point:
Make sure you pay attention to where the tour is leaving from. From my research it seemed that most of the tours left from the area south of the River Seine. As this was on the opposite side of Paris to where we were staying, it would have meant adding a further45 minutes of travel time each way on to the trip- another down side for us.
Departure times:
All the morning tours seem to leave Paris around 8:30am & 9:30am, arriving at Giverny between 10:30 and 11:30am. There was certainly a noticeable increase of visitors at this time, and it started to become much more crowded. This didn’t bother us though as we were almost finished by then!
Tour size:
Many of the tours have capacity for 50 people, consider whether this is ok for your child, or whether they would find it too overwhelming.
NAVIGATING PUBLIC TRANSPORT FROM PARIS TO MONET'S HOUSE (with Autistic Children)
Depending on your children’s age, additional needs, how much stuff you need to carry and their capacity to handle lots of change and noise, it is entirely possible to use public transport to get to from Paris to Monet’s House and Garden. The journey requires getting a metro/bus to Gare St Lazare, then a train to Vernon-Giverny.
There should be a shuttle bus waiting at the station to take you to the Giverny Gardens. The shuttle costs €5 one way in addition to your train fare and takes about 15 minutes to get Monet’s house. The shuttle bus usually departs 20 minutes after each train arrival from Paris. The return shuttle is meant to arrive at the Vernon-Giverny station 20 minutes before trains go back to Paris.
We stayed in the Pigalle district of Paris. I worked out that out quickest journey time was around 2 - 2.5 hours. While I would certainly have gone with this option before I had children, unfortunately the number of changes and transitions required and the early start would have been exhausting for the boys, draining them before we even got there.
CAR HIRE FOR A GIVERNY FAMILY DAY TRIP
There is also the option of hiring a car for the day. As no one in the group was keen to take the driving on, or spend time going out to the airport to collect a car and be responsible for re-fuelling etc we pretty much ruled this option out straight away.
CONCLUSION:
With careful planning, a flexible approach and lots of support our family day trip to Giverny was a huge success, and yours can be too!
The 6 decisions that really helped us, as parents, enjoy the day, while still meeting the additional needs of our autistic children were:
Being picked up and dropped off at our apartment - this was a great way to start and end the day. Fred, Charliey, J and I were all able to arrive calm but excited.
We booked our tickets in advance through the Ticketmaster - this meant we were in control of our arrival and departure time. When the boys were ready to leave, we simply left.
We deliberately booked to arrive early and leave just as it was getting really busy- this protected the boys from the worst of the crowds and gave them plenty of space to move at pace, and in their own unique way around the garden.
We chose timings that allowed us to arrive at the nearby La Capucine Restaurant right at beginning of lunch service. This meant we could bag a table in the outside area which had a pond with resident frogs and other interesting things to see (although Charlie wasnt so keen on the chickens!) The boys enjoyed having lots of space to run around and play before having to get in the car for the return trip.
Once we had placed our order I took Charlie out for a walk/push in his buggy to explore the village – he really likes looking at the countryside and this activity helped him regulate and distracted him from getting bored as we waited for the food.
(I also had the unexpected pleasure of discovering the Giverny Chocolat by Babzacao shop . https://www.babzacao.fr/ After sampling the goods we returned with bags of chocolatey treats and a complimentary easter egg for the boys - two very happy campers indeed!
We packed Fred a large selection of fidget toys and his soft comforters for the drive there and back, and allowed Charlie was to use our phone / tablet in the car without headphones which he finds uncomfortable. It was great for us to be able to relax and know that the boys were not disturbing anyone else.
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