As we knew we were going to be back in Paris we got in and booked ourselves a tour of the Palace of Versailles.
A tip for anyone ever thinking about going to see Versailles (and you should – it’s magnificent), book a skip-the-line guided tour. It costs another 40-odd Euro extra, but you get to walk straight in. Not the case for those in the walk-up line. By lunchtime the walk-up line was over 100-metres long and the wait would have been horrendous (probably over an hour).
The second tip is go early, as early as you can. By lunchtime the crowd in the Palace is shoulder-to-shoulder and the experience is unpleasant.
Anyway, we went early and booked a tour, so none of that bothered us.
The Palace is very similar in some respects to the Louvre. Not surprising I guess since Louis XIV was involved with both. The grandeur and ornate nature of the place can be gauged from the photos, and they don’t do it justice.
Once we’d seen enough of the inside, we wandered out into the garden. The gardens of Versailles are legendary, and rightly so. I don’t remember how many acres the whole thing is, that’s homework for anyone reading this, but to do them justice would take all day, maybe two.
That’s where tip number three comes in – and one we didn’t heed. I knew that you could hire a golf buggy to get around the gardens. Really, why can’t people just walk? So we didn’t do it. We regretted it.
The buggies cost 42€ an hour to hire (about $70) but in a golf buggy you could look around all of the gardens in the afternoon. We looked around until we could walk no further, and probably investigated 10% of what was on offer.
If I’m ever in Paris again I’d go back to Versailles, hire a buggy and give it all a look over.
Something interesting about the gardens is that there was not a flower to be seen. Wrong time of year? Maybe. But there didn’t appear to be any garden beds, only trees and some lawn, plus a lot of gravel. Check the photos, no flowers.
By the time we’d done all this the day was nearly over, so we trained back to Montmartre and dined at another of the million or so establishments. A Tibetan restaurant, just to be different. And bought souvenirs. Now that we don’t have to drag them around with us it’s safe to accumulate a few souvenirs.
And that’s Wednesday.
Stephen and Michelle
*the website says about 300 Ha of grounds and gardens. That’s a lot.
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