Versailles

Decided to go to Versailles today. The weather wasn't great but since time in France is short, it had to be today. There were also lots and lots of other tourists heading to Versailles. The trip time from where we were staying was actually around an hour which surprised me. I hadn't expected it to take that long to get there.

Versailles used to be a country town but is now considered to be on the outskirts of Paris. It is a very quiet place and it doesn’t seem like a lot of people live there. The shops probably owe a lot of their patronage to tourists. The palace named ‘Château de Versailles’ is about a 5 minute walk from the station.

The first thing you notice when you get to Château de Versailles is the sheer number of people. We went on a day when the weather wasn’t great and it was still about a half hour wait to get in after buying tickets. The palace itself is surrounded by golden gates. 

Once inside, there is an audio tour that takes you around the palace into the various rooms and tells you a little of the history of the palace. Most of it centres around Louis XIV who built this massive palace as an expansion of his father’s palace. I don’t actually know French history well so my visit was really just admiring the architecture and room decoration of the palace and the grounds. 

The grounds are absolutely huge! It takes a long time to walk around. If I was to do this over again, I would probably hire one of the little golf carts they have and drive around in that. 

The grounds are huge. It takes ages to walk around.

Are we there yet?...

What I enjoyed more than the main palace was seeing Mary Antoinette’s little palaces. There is a Grand Trianon and a Petite Trianon. The furnishings were not as elaborate as the main palace but the ambience seemed warmer and I liked the furnishings a lot more. It seemed as if the decorations had more of a feminine touch.

Grand Trianon

Small chapel in the Petite Trianon

Our little expedition to Versailles and tour of the Château de Versailles and Mary Antoinette’s palaces actually took longer than expected. Visiting definitely takes a whole day and even then we did just rush around as we tried to see everything. The grounds shut around 7:30pm and you get shooed out around 7pm. We didn’t stay that long but it definitely was a whole day trip and we got back to the hotel absolutely knackered from all the walking.