Ah, Versailles. I do believe this is my favorite place in France. When we were planning this trip, when my friends and husband asked me what was a ‘must-see’, Versailles was at the top of my list.
We had bought tickets in advance, to both the palace, gardens, and then the night show.
When we got off the train, we immediately saw sisters doing cart witnessing in English. They were in the English group there.
Because it was a Saturday, it was INSANELY busy. We waited in line for probably 2 hours just to get in (with our pre-printed tickets) But that’s okay. We had plenty to look at.
We toured the palace first. Saw the King and Queens bedrooms, and the Hall of Mirrors of course. It was very crowded.
Then we decided to rent a golf cart. We had about an hour and a half to tour the gardens before they closed (they close from like 5:00 until 8:00). So we grabbed our stuff (including our wine and cheese ha ha) and took off.
We saw fountains. Some set to music.
Then we drove to the Petit Trianon, given to Marie Antoinette by her husband. Inside was really cool (this was also new to me, it was just too cold the last time I was there).
Then we drove to Marie Antoinette’s hamlet that she had constructed while she was there to ‘escape’ her princess/queen life. It was amazing. You couldn’t go inside any of the buildings. They all looked pretty untouched. It was so pretty. There were swans, and they even had donkeys, chickens, goats, etc.
Then we made a mad rush back to our golf cart because we HAD to have it back by 5:00 and it was about 4:59. With about a 10 minute drive back to the return place. So Nancy, kept yelling “Attention” as she was plowing through the crowds of people in our cart, only in French (AH-TAUNT-SEE-ON!!) to get people to move out of the way (our golf cart didn’t have a horn). It was so funny. We decided that she will be the one to drive our getaway car.
Then we left the park to go have some dinner. It was a good place with good beer, and then we ordered a ginormous mojito that served 4.
Then we went back into the park for the fountains and fireworks.
We kept seeing all of these people dressed up going into the park, so we asked one of them what was going on and they said that one Saturday night per year, by invitation only, there is an event at Versailles where people dress up in period costumes and then after the fireworks (after all of the common folk leave) they have an event inside the palace (like a dance or something). It was so cool to see everyone dressed up and walking around as the music played.
The fountains were so pretty all lit up at night and the fireworks were amazing.
It was a SUPER late night. We missed the last trains to Cormeilles, so we took a cab from Paris to Cormeilles (at like 1:00 in the morning). But it was totally worth it! The cab drivers in Paris are just as insane as the ones in London. Yikes.
