Paris - Day 3

Day 3 was not nearly as frantic. We had done the things we could do in the city. The one thing that Max wanted to do was go to Versailles, because he remembered doing it as a kid. It was on my list, so that worked for me, too. I really wanted to see Petit Trianon (one of the smaller palaces on the grounds) because it was Marie Antoinette's favorite palace. I also really wanted to see her little village. We woke up later than we had been, but still early for us. We all decided we were still tired, so went back to sleep for a little while. Then we got up, packed, checked out, and loaded up the car to go to Versailles. We decided that if we drove instead of taking the metro, we could just leave from there, and not have to come back to the hotel.

We got there and saw a horrible line. I looked for the ticketholders line and saw that the horrible line I saw was the one for people who already had tickets! The line to actually buy tickets was super short. We weren't sure if this was a place where kids need a ticket or not, so Max got in the big line and I ran with Em to the ticket line. We got up there really quickly, and the lady assured us that she didn't need one unless we wanted to buy the additional tickets to see the formal gardens or the fountain show, in which case we would all need them, because that part wasn't included in our museum pass. Awesome. We got outside, and Max was already at the front of the line! As a matter of fact, he had been waiting for us for a while. That was the fastest moving line ever.

There wasn't a line for the audio tours, so we got them. However, they were looooong. They didn't have a kid's one, so Em was bored, and the narrator was French, so it was really hard to both understand him and look at things in the crush of people. So, we gave up on the audio tour. I found a book about taking kids to Versailles, so, like the Louvre, the book was our audio tour stand in.We also looked for something that looked good for our cat sitters, but we didn't see anything.

Opulent is the only word for Versailles. Most of the furnishings were sold in the Revolution, so most of the ones there now are reproductions. But, they've done a darn good job showing us why the French people decided that had enough of the royal family. It was spectacular.

Most of the palace is not open to visitors, so it really didn't take very long to go through the palace itself. We then got some water and headed out to the Trianon palaces and Marie's village. Unfortunately, the way to the Trianons was also the entrance to the fountain show, and they wanted to charge us for the fountain show to get in. We didn't want to pay for the show if we weren't going to watch it, and we didn't really want to watch it. The guard explained to us that we had to "go the other way" to get in for free. We had no idea where the other way might be. According to the map, it looked like there might be another entrance to the grounds out around the walls. We had to walk out into town to get around, but it was an adventure. We did find another entrance, but it was guarded and we couldn't get in. This guy spoke much better English, though, and he was able to show us where the free entrance was.

The free entrance was a trek, and then we needed to cross the extensive grounds. It took us probably an hour from when we left the palace until we got to Petit Trianon. I'm glad we did, though, because it was lovely. The palace itself was beautiful - much less formal than Versailles. Marie had it as her own personal palace when she wanted to get away from court. The gardens were really beautiful. We were going to skip Marie's theater, but then I read that is was widely considered to be one of the most beautiful buildings in Europe, so we went. It was breathtaking. Marie loved to perform in plays, and so she had her own theater built on the grounds of Petit Trianon.We weren't allowed to go all the way in, but here it is from the lobby looking into the theater part.

Another thing that Marie loved was getting away from the formality of court. She had a play village built for herself and her children to play in. It's still there, and in really good condition. Well, the outside is, at least. The windows were all blacked out, so I have no idea how they look on the inside. I think I would like to be a queen without a care, because then I could have something like that.

The billiard room and Marie's little house

Malborough Tower

Much like the French pesants, we were starving by then, so we went to the little cafe near Petit Trianon and got sandwiches. We had promised Em ice cream, but we couldn't find any. :( We walked up to Grand Trianon to use the restroom and see if we could find any ice cream, but no. At the Petit Trianon gift shop, we found Versailles jellys which we bought for our neighbors. (Side note, one of their sons loved the jelly so much that he said they now had to go to Versailles to get more) It was so hot that we paid to take the little train back to the big palace. It went to both of the Trianons, the Grand Canal, and the back of Versailles. We were so lucky that we decided to take it from Grand Trianon, because almost nobody got off at any of the other stops, and so the people waiting for the train at those stops were unable to get on. There were some very angry people in line. People were trying to cut in line, trying to get on without paying, all sorts of stuff. The train driver was really unhappy and yelling at everybody. But not us!

We got off at the back of the palace and walked around a bit. It is huge.

The grounds go all the way to the horizon in this picture.

The back of the palace

After that, it was time to go home. We got in the car and drove back. It didn't take nearly as long to get around Paris this time, but since we started out further to the west, it still took us about the same time to get home. I had taken some car sickness medicine (a nice new side-effect of my migraines is car sickness, and since I had a headache, I took it prophylactically) so I took a nap in the back seat and Em sat up front to talk to Max. It was her first time in the front seat that wasn't in a truck.

Emma says - If I were a French peasant, I would be revolting right now (Karen says - Em, honey, you are revolting right now, maybe you should shower). We were making revolution jokes the whole time.  My favorite part of Versailles was the gardens at Petit Trianon. I liked the lake near the grotto and all of the little mountainy paths in that same area.