We both tried to sleep in this morning. Nina was up first, probably around 6am. I managed another half hour after that. We had breakfast (part of the room cost), packed up as lightly as possible, and made our way to Versailles.
The route was on the Metro, about a 2 minute walk from the hotel, to the stop for the Eiffel Tower and then we transferred to the railroad to go out to Versailles. The total trip was about a half hour or so.
We bought our tickets to the palace at the information booth as we exited the train station and walked the 5 minutes up to the palace.
See all the people inside the fence? That was the serpentine line for entrance into the palace. We stood in line for just under an hour before admittance. There’s a beautiful optical illusion painted on one of the buildings associated with the palace:
The painted building is actually round but the painting looks like it goes in rather than out. Nina is taking a selfie trying to get the illusion into the picture.
The Palace.Is.Beautiful. And huge. And crowded with people. There were probably 10,000 souls in the building with us making the tour. In some of the rooms it was difficult to even move. I can’t imagine what it would be like in July or August when all the tourists are there along with the sweltering heat.
There are probably a thousand paintings in the building. Most of them are portraits of people, but there are quite a few scenes, some quite dramatic:
Like this one relating to the crusades and crossing the Bosphorus in Istanbul (or, in those days, Constantinople). The ceilings were also beautiful.
The “Hall of Mirrors” was definitely the highlight.
You can begin to get an idea of how many people were there with us. This long hall has mirrors on the left and several dozen chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. Absolutely stunning. One can almost imagine attending a formal ball in this room.
We had lunch at one of the restaurants in the castle, bought a couple of souvenirs, and headed outside to the gardens.
The people were all gathered around waiting for the barely-visible fountain to come to life with classical stereo music accompanying. The fountains came on about 5 minutes later at 2:30pm.
We did a tour around the upper part of the gardens and then got a text from our daughter Heather telling us we should rent a golf cart for the gardens. Just then one drove by. I hadn’t seen them before and we were almost to the end of our visit. There was about an hour-long line waiting for a cart to become available. The price was 34 Euros (about $38) for one hour. Nina observed that we should do a better job of scoping out all the options when we’re traveling to someplace like this.
Then we reversed the route back to the hotel, unloaded, and went out for dinner. We’ve got back to the room just before 9pm and we’re right ready to call it a day!
The closest English-speaking church service is about an hour away. We’ll do church like we did last week … probably at Notre Dame Cathedral followed by the Louvre.