Paris day 2: Versailles
Our first full day in Paris. Originally we were supposed to go to see the Ice Nine Kills concert, which is why we went to Paris in the first place. However, the band cancelled their gig to go on tour with Metallica, so we had to find something new to do.
We had a long list of places we wanted to see, but we had to buy tickets in advance for many of them. We chose the Palace of Versailles because we thought it was a must-see and we already knew it was going to take all day. We already had tickets in advance, so the only thing left was to figure out how to get there. Conveniently again, we were able to travel by metro and train. We had an early wake-up call, as we had to be there by 10am. After a light breakfast, we packed our backpacks and nervously set off.
The train ride was fine, except being a bit worried about finding the right platform, getting off at the right place and getting to the palace on time. In the end, everything went smoothly and we arrived at the Palace of Versailles. The city itself was quite interesting to explore and the palace was even more interesting.
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We didn’t quite see everything even though we were there to explore for 7 hours. We explored almost all the apartments, the garden, the village in the garden, the smaller palaces and of course the souvenir shops. There was plenty to see in the apartments, even though they were all decorated in a similar style. We had the official free audio guide of Versailles downloaded on our phones, so we stopped in each room to listen and take our time. At the beginning of the first apartment, my fiancée and I went to the previous room to take photos and lost our friend. I had her phone on me, so we couldn’t get in touch with her. Luckily we found each other after the first apartment. Turns out she had gone ahead and we were behind the whole time because of the audio tapes. We took lots of pictures and it was great to see a place where so much history has happened.
Once we had had enough of the royal apartments and souvenir shops, we decided to go and explore the gardens. The weather was a bit chilly, but fortunately sunny, so it was nice to spend some time outside. The garden was huge and there were a few smaller palaces for “summer holidays”, as well as a whole little village. You could hire golf carts on site and in hindsight that might have been a good idea. Now we spent a long time walking from one place to another. It was all worth it though, as the gardens were well kept and it was interesting to see how differently the rich lived compared to the poorer people. It would probably have been even more spectacular in summer, when the flowers were blooming and the plants were in all their glory.
Even though we were tired after walking all day, we finally decided to leave mostly because the place was starting to close. We would have liked to explore the gardens further. Having seen most of it, we still hadn’t seen everything, which was a bit of a shame. There was just so much to see. It’s a bit like the British Museum, you can’t really see properly everything in a day.
We were really hungry, so we thought long and hard about whether we would go back to Paris and have a proper dinner there, or have a peaceful dinner in Versailles and then return to Paris. In the end, we decided to eat in Versailles to experience something a little different and to avoid having to wait so long for dinner. After a bit of searching, we found a nice restaurant that served steak, pizza and other good stuff. Everyone had a delicious meal and I also bought my fiancée a coffee as she was very sleepy after a long day. We ate in peace, enjoyed our food and slowly made our way towards the train station.
At the station we encountered a slight difficulty, we didn’t know which ticket machine we should buy which ticket from, so we decided to go to the ticket office to ask the staff. Unfortunately, they didn’t really speak English and didn’t seem to understand where we were going. Apparently we pronounced the name of our destination in some funny way. Eventually, however, we came to a mutual understanding and were able to get the tickets. The journey to the accommodation was long but otherwise uneventful and once there we relaxed, drank beer and were happy with the end of the day. Sitting down and relaxing was definitely needed after the long day.
