In the delightfully (we hope) non-linear order of travel log episodes, I thought I would share our trip to the Palace of Versailles as part of our weekend in Paris at the end of February.

The Palace of Versailles with a bit of obligatory scaffolding

It started out as a misadventure, but everything came out fairly well in the end.  We started by dropping by the open market outside our hotel to pick up food for a picnic.  Terran had been sucked in by the street vendors the night before and picked up two different kinds of cheese — a bleu and a soft cheese sort of like brie but more pungent.  I’m not sure if we actually tracked what they were called.  The morning of the Versailles trip, we stood in line at the bakery (boulangerie).  We were surprised there was a line, but after we looked, we discovered there was always a line at bakeries in the morning.  It appears that the idea is to get bread when it is fresh in the morning.  I guess that was also true in Madrid, but we usually shopped at weird hours.  The line moved quickly, and we picked up a baguette and a couple of chocolate eclairs.  Then we dropped by the prepared meat store (charcuterie) in search of pate.  And we found it.  The prices in that store made our eyes pop out.  We tried not to look like stupid tourists while we went around, scanning the prices for something we felt we were willing to pay for.  We ended up with a jar of duck pate with dried figs in it, and it was delicious.

View of the grounds from the wall where we had our picnic

Getting there was the misadventure.  We’d read several places that you should try to get entrance tickets to the palace ahead of time to avoid lines.  My 2009 travel book indicated that you could get a combination train and entrance ticket at the subway ticket office.  We tried this and got dumb looks.  Guess there’s no combo ticket, or at least not in February.  So we just bought the train ticket.  It’s about an hour out to Versailles by train, and when we got there, we were supposed to be able to buy tickets at the tourist information office.  There were well-posted signs to the office when we got off the train.  We followed them and ended up in McDonald’s McCafe. (I kid you not.  McDonald’s has a chain of cafes in France.  I don’t know whether to be amused or frightened.)  A couple of circuits of the area did not uncover a tourist information office.  At this point, we were getting very annoyed.

So we said: “Look, it’s a cold, rainy day in February.  This is almost as far off-season as you can get.  Let’s just show up.  How bad can it be?”

A row of galleries, each a different color. We assume this is the inspiration for The Masque of the Red Death.

Look, guys, this is VERSAILLES.  It’s one of the top tourist destinations.  Do not EVER ask yourself how bad it can be.  It can be worse than that.

So, yes, there was a line at entrance.  But it could have been a lot worse.  It only took up 30-40 minutes.  They processed the line very fast by giving you annoyed, dumb looks when you asked for any clarification on what the type of tickets meant.  We ended up buying a ticket that included the newly opened suite of Marie Antoinette, and when we consulted the map, it turned out that the suite was a half-hour walk one-way across the grounds.  In theory, there were shuttles, but I’m not sure we ever saw one.  With the time lost shopping in the morning and standing in line, we didn’t have time to go there.  It’s a pity, but we still had a good time.

Since all the delays at set things later than we’d intended, our first act at Versailles was to unpack our picnic and eat it on the grounds.  It had been misting off-and-on all day, but it wasn’t raining at that moment, and the air was misty and mysterious.  I will have to dig up pictures of what the grounds look like when things are blooming, but it was beautiful just the same.

The Gallery of Mirrors. Wow.

After that, on to the King’s chambers.  The entry fee came with an audioguide.  This was possibly the best audioguide we’ve had yet.  In general, audioguides seem to think that they justify themselves by giving you as many words as possible — you end up standing in front of something for ten minutes, blocking foot traffic and annoying people, while you listen to a long-winded essay on why this painting was King Fred’s favorite portrait of himself.  In this audioguide, the facts were almost always both fascinating and concise.  But it was also on extremely old hardware and had trouble loading its own entries.  So we’d end up hanging around, blocking foot traffic, trying to get the device to work.  You just can’t win.

For a tidbit of history, the Palace of Versailles was constructed by King Louis XIV, the Sun King.  He had lived through civil war and wanted to move his capital out of Paris to someplace remote in order to keep his nobles more isolated and under his control.  It worked, aside from practically

I attempt to photograph myself photographing the Gallery.

bankrupting France.  It seems like a lot of it worked simply due to his personality.  Louis XIV believed that as a royal, he was bound to make his life a public performance.  Even his bedchamber was roped off into public and private areas.

And, of course, there’s just nothing like the extreme conspicuous consumption of the great halls of Versailles.  I guess I’d expected them to be less lovely for their absurdity.  But every room left me awed.

After we finished the King’s halls and established we couldn’t possibly get to Marie Antoinette’s suites before closing, we toured the queen’s and dauphin’s suites.  If you have a leisurely day at Versailles, I might advise touring these first.  They’re quite lovely, but after the King’s halls, you tend to think, “Ho, hum, this is nice, but it should have much more gold leaf and murals on the ceilling!”

So, we didn’t get as much time as we would have liked, but we still had great fun.

More pictures:

A drawing room in the queen's suite. At one time, it house Madame de Pompadour.

Looks like the same style as the chairs in Mom and Dad's parlor!

A random view from wandering around the grounds.