Parisian Paradise - Part III: Versailles

We woke up early Saturday morning and headed downstairs for the first of our continental breakfasts. I don't know if it was because on the long flight or what, but I could not get enough food in me. Deidra, Whit, and Brian were all amazed as I downed four croissants, a hard-boiled egg, a chunk of baguette, a pain au chocolat, a brioche au sucre, toast with cheese and sliced meat (ham and salami), applesauce and a bowl of mixed fruit (along with a few glasses of orange juice). I was pretty amazed myself, actually!

After they pried me away from the breakfast table, we took the metro and a train out to make a day trip to Versailles - about a 30-minute train ride from Paris.

Versailles turned out to be one of most exciting - and disappointing - parts of the entire trip.

The palace at Versailles was HUGE and just amazing to look at. How did they create such vast and ornate structures back then?

Before Versailles, the royal palace was inside Paris (where the Louvre Museum is now - more to come on that in a later post). Louis XIV built this palace in Versailles so that he would could be apart from everyday people. Basically, they would have to travel to him in Versailles if they had an issue, which would be much more difficult than just walking down the street in Paris.

But Versailles was also the place where the king invited national and international leaders to come and hang out, basically. So it was a way to show off and impress them with all the colorful paintings and murals, ornate architecture, detailed sculptures, etc.

A lot of history has come out of Versailles. Louis the XVI reigned from here with his wife, Marie-Antoinette, before they were overthrown during the French Revolution and eventually beheaded.

The famous Treaty of Versailles, which ended World War I, was signed in the Hall of Mirrors:

So, seeing all of that was pretty darn cool. That was the exciting part.

The dissappointing part? Well, Versailles has an amazing garden and grounds, along with another residence, which was basically Marie-Antoinette's estate. But because of the weather, those sites were closed. This is the most we saw of the grounds - from out the palace window:

So our "day trip" to Versailles was over well before lunch, and we headed back on the train to Paris.

The other thing that was frustrating was that Versailles is covered in the cost of a Museum Pass - a pass you can buy that gets you into quite a few Paris museums and other sites. Whit and Brian had purchased their Museum Pass at the airport when they arrived. We didn't, and figured we could buy the pass at Versailles. Unfortunately we were wrong - they didn't sell the passes there. So we had to swallow the cost of Versailles separately, and then buy our Museum Pass later. Argh! There's an extra $45 down the drain!

But, I think we were pretty good with our money throughout the trip and made our Museum Pass well worth it anyway (as you'll see in future posts).

So the excitement of Versailles far outweighed the disappointment and frustration - especially looking back on it now. It was one of my favorite parts of the trip.