Versailles

The next day of our France trip was mostly spent not in Paris, but in nearby Versailles, to see the famous palace there. It's an hour subway ride each way, and the château and its grounds are huge -- so a visit is easily going to take up most of your day.

It's well worth it, though. In the context of the modern super-rich, this shrine to opulence is a reminder that "the more things change, the more they stay the same" -- a place simultaneously impressive, ridiculous, beautiful, and gaudy. The chapel alone is larger than Sainte-Chapelle (which we'd seen back in Paris the day before), with elaborately detailed paintings covering every inch of its high ceilings.

There's an official Versailles app with audio guide, and we downloaded it to hear the descriptions of the dozens of rooms we wandered through. Though each room had a different theme, and was used historically for something specific -- guard's quarters, guest spaces, dining, separate bedrooms for each member of the royal family -- there was an unintended bit of comedy in the narrations. It seems that almost every room in the palace was also occasionally used for gaming. It became a running joke for us for the rest of the trip, that any space we entered was "also sometimes used for games." It conjured a new kind of board gaming "challenge" in my mind -- not to play each game in your collection at least once, or to play 10 games 10 times each in a year, but simply to play some board game in every room of your house. I'm sure us commoners could pull that off if we really set our minds to it (though the bathrooms might be awkward). But if your house is the Palace of Versailles? Good luck.

We paused for lunch at a restaurant in the palace before continuing the tour outside in the palace gardens. There's a whole separate admission fee to see them, and when we first stepped onto the plaza behind the palace, we wondered if we'd been conned. But soon, we discovered that if your time at Versailles is limited, you'd be much better off spending it in the gardens rather than the building.

At first, you see only a wide graveled area...

But there is a staircase up ahead. There must be something down there...

And yes, that's quite beautiful. This area, called the Orangerie (for the many boxed trees planted there) is certainly striking. And yet, after the so-far-over-the-top-we-can't-even-see-the-top of the palace interior, this can't really be worth charging separate admission, can it?

But wait... there's another staircase on the far side of the plaza. What's over there? We almost didn't go over to see. And when we did, and initially saw only a path down along a stone wall leading to a break in the trees on the right, we almost didn't go down. It just didn't look like much!

Boy, would we have missed out. That's where the real gardens -- implausibly huge -- begin. There are a series of hedge mazes, each one leading to a unique "bosquet" in the center. A wide open space with a waterfall feature...

A huge colonnade...

 A fountain show...

 

And more. Plus, a grand park -- literally named "Grand Trianon" with its own wild basin and artwork. There were hundreds of people milling about, canoeing, you name it. A few were driving golf carts, and only after we'd seen a few did we clock that they weren't gardeners, they were tourists who'd found a spot to rent the carts in order to easily reach as much of the area as possible. (We wished we'd done that.)

We'd come that close to missing out on the best part of a visit to the Palace of Versailles. (So finally! A day where something didn't go a little wrong!) And now I can report back to make sure you don't miss out if you ever have the chance to go.

Once we made it back into the city, we wandered for a bit in Le Marais, the Paris district that includes the city's "gay neighborhood." It was definitely an active, open place full of restaurants and bars. We enjoyed one of the former. We skipped the latter after seeing dozens of people crowding the streets outside for a smoke (and a break from the pounding music?). We're too old for that scene.

In all, a real highlight of a day for the trip.