It’s time to kick this show up a notch! After a week in the French Countryside (in Champagne and the Loire Valley), we decided it was time to work our way back to the cities. We started with a smaller one, Versailles which is located about 45 minutes from the center of Paris. If you’re in Paris, it makes a great day trip too.
Now, you may think that Versailles is JUST a Palace. Well, friends, you would be wrong. While the Palace of Versailles does exist here, so does an entire city built to support it. When Louis XIV moved his court out of the center of Paris and into the ENORMOUS Palace he built, an entire village moved there too. You see, someone had to feed all those people, clean, run the government, scoop horse poop, pull weeds, fix carriages, polish the gold, etc. And, if prominent courtiers weren’t living in the Palace, they would build their own grand houses as close to the Palace as possible, meaning more properties needing workers. It is a bustling and growing city to this day.
After a series of train rerouting and cancelations, we found ourselves driving into Versailles from Tours, which was perfectly fine. We enjoyed the drive and kept remarking on how very similar France looks to Iowa in this area. After a stop at the busiest rest stop in France (seriously, it was wild), we soon found ourselves pulling up to the Hotel Le Louis Versailles Chateau, which so happened to be just down the street from the Palace of Versailles. Oh yes, we would have had VIP status staying this close to the Palace in the 18th century to go nibble cakes with Marie. Sadly, Marie lost her head and we’re not nobles. Fortunately, it’s now 2023 and not…whenever that was.
We dropped our bags at the hotel, returned the car, and walked back to the hotel. It was somewhere around 3 PM by now and we were hungry, so we went off in search of some late lunch or a snack. We ended up at Positive Café, just a few blocks from the hotel, for smoothies. We had planned on sandwiches or salads, but they only seemed to be serving smoothies when we got there. That works too. We went for quite a long walk after that.
Originally, we had planned to get tickets for the night fountains and fireworks show at the Palace that evening, but instead opted to get an early dinner so we could get an earlier start at the Palace the next day. This turned out to be a great idea for multiple reasons. First, we found an amazing Indian restaurant for dinner and had some of the best food we had had on the trip so far. Second, the fountains and fireworks show ended very late and would have left us tired for the next day (which would have been really bad). Third, because we called it an early night, we had an early morning the next day and there were SO many things we ended up loving about that.
Here is where our advice for touring the Palace of Versailles begins.
Go early. 8 am early. We got there right as the garden gates opened for the day and it was perfect. The morning air was delightful, you could hear the birds singing, and the complete lack of people was heavenly. I got some of the best photos on our trip in the hour between when the gardens opened and when the palace opened at 9 am.
After you’ve had that hour to yourself, go get in line for your palace tour (you did remember to get your tickets in advance, right?) – after a quick stop at the restroom in the gardens along the Allee Royale. You’ll thank me later.
Book your palace tour first thing. 9 am is best, but our 9:30 was just fine as well. After that, the line will literally circle the courtyard. There is no shade. Everything is cobblestones. It’s hot. Make sure you get in line at least 30 minutes before your timeslot. I can’t speak for the tours after 10 am, I just know by the time we went in at 9:30, we had been standing in line for 30 minutes and the line was so long I couldn’t see the end.
Wear. Comfortable. Shoes.
I can’t tell you how many people I saw in heels or ridiculous sandals. What are you doing? Honestly. We walked 10 miles the entire day. I would not want to do that in heels! I get it, it’s a palace, and you want to do its grandeur justice. So, wear a cute dress and some fabulous fashion sneakers that will allow your feet to survive the day. Be smart. I love fashion, but fashion over functionality on this day – no.
I’d tell you about our fabulous tour of the Palace, but you need to experience it yourself. There are no words (Jason says: but you just called it fabulous!). It’s over the top in every way. The Hall of Mirrors is everything I dreamed of. The King’s rooms were very crowded (again, go early). There are so many wings and rooms that were dedicated to each of the King’s children. The galleries are endless and full of statues of so many people you learned about in history class and loads more you didn’t. I promise you’ll recognize at least one. Na*ahem*poleon.
Our Palace tour was self-guided and took about three hours. We downloaded both the Palace of Versailles app and Rick Steve’s Europe app (we love Rick for his honest and entertaining commentary) and jumped back and forth between the two for explanations in each room. That beat standing in line to get a headset and paying for that too. You can probably do the tour in about two hours, but you’d really have to hustle, so don’t plan on that. It’s Versailles, slow down and drink it in.
After our Palace tour, we headed back to the gardens to a MUCH different atmosphere than we had encountered earlier in the morning. It was hopping! We decided to grab some lunch at one of the café stands and sat on a bench to eat. At Versaille. Wild. I wonder who the last person was to sit on that bench before the Palace was raided during the French Revolution. This is what I mean by slow down. You’re walking in some mighty big footsteps (Jason says: I always thought they had little feet)…or sitting where a rather large hoopskirt once sat.
After lunch, we went for a long walk from the Palace to the Grand Canal, and all the way to the end of the Allee Sanit-Antoine before realizing we couldn’t access the Queen’s Hamlet from there. So, we backtracked a bit to the entrance of the Petit Trianon. (Jason says: gosh, aren’t we fancy?!)
The Petit Trianon is where Marie Antoinette spent most of her time outside of the Palace. While it’s still a grand house, it’s tiny compared to the Palace or even the Grand Trianon next door. However, she was a lover of the quiet country life (I can relate) and so would spend her time here and in the Queen’s Hamlet which was a grouping of small buildings around a lake she had built beyond her garden for relaxation and agricultural experiments. The buildings are very rustic compared to everything else on the estate. (Jason says: Keep in mind the rest of the estate is literally gilded with gold, so…’rustic’…yeah) Very charming. Her isolation here led to MANY rumors about nefarious acts and had no small part in the French Revolution (Jason says: I swear I smelled cake in her kitchens).
Next, we wandered over to the Grand Trianon. This is a much larger, pink marble “country villa” where Louis XIV spent his time away from the Palace pursuing various affairs. (Jason says: leave it to the French to build a house on the other side of your yard to get away from your other house). Many different portions of the royal family have lived here over the years or stayed there while visiting. It was also occupied occasionally by Napoleon’s second wife, Empress Marie Louise, during the First Empire and refurnished by him as all the original furnishings were sold off during the Revolution. Its last occupant was Queen Marie Amelie, the wife of Louise Philippe I, the last Queen and King of France (they added the plumbing). It has been used by the State for various events since. It was opened to the public after a massive renovation in 1963 and is still used today as an official residence of the French President to host foreign officials.
After the Trianon Palaces, we wandered back towards the Grand Canal and encountered so many people in boats on the canal that they could hardly move. Comical. We opted for more walking through the various gardens and wound our way through the grounds to eventually exit near the Neptune Fountain. It was nearly 6 pm by then, so we walked back through the city to our hotel to make a plan for dinner.
We did it! Almost 10 miles. 24,000 steps. And so much left unseen. The estate covers 2,014 acres today, a bit down from the 37,000 acres during its height. There’s no way you could ever see it all in a day!
What must you eat in France? Crepes obviously! We headed to BleNoir Family Creperie for dinner. We both inhaled a savory and a sweet crepe before taking the long way back to our hotel since it would be our last stroll through Versailles. We waved goodbye to the Palace from outside the gates and went to pack.
The original plan was to take the train into Paris the next morning, but once again, strikes and construction foiled our plans. Unfortunately, the carriages were all booked, so we got an Uber instead. We’ll tell you all about Paris starting next week!
What do you think? Did we love it or hate it?
