Today we venture outside of downtown Paris to see the Palace of Versailles - so we have to be up a bit early as it's a one hour metro/train ride from Paris to Versailles. Judging from yesterday's experience at the Louvre and the fact it looks to be a beautiful day weather-wise, we are expecting hordes of people. We weren't wrong, the train was packed and oddly all the seats face each other so you have your legs bumping against some strangers legs. A pleasant surprise of some performers on the train playing a saxaphone and an accordion. I dug into my pocket and pulled out whatever change I had but I might have accidentally only given them a Canadian quarter (or maybe that was the accordion player on the metro). Anyway that helped mitigate the packed nature of the train.
We are again early for our time slot but that proves to be a good idea as the lines are long even though you have a scheduled time. Our time slot was again 12pm. We have been saving some time in the morning by making our breakfasts in our room as we have a little kitchenette in the room. We bought some crepes, vanilla creme, bananas, Nutella and Canadian maple syrup and had those which were delicious and loaded us up on calories for the days of walking. We easily burnt all of them and then some - we averaged probably about 18km each day of walking.
The palace is huge from the outside and over the top ornate in gold and stunning architecture of the buildings.
We got the audio tour for this as well and it is much simpler and actually useful. The tour is basically a one-way tour through the rooms with little options of where to go once you are started the tour. This is good and bad in that there is only one way traffic is going, but it makes for several pinch points through some doorways where you are more focused on making your way through the crowd then looking at the opulence of the palace. And it is opulent to the extreme - they can't just have the ceilings painted with masterpieces, they need to have ornate sculpture and carvings all over their ceilings and walls. It's pretty wild to see how this royalty lived when common people were worrying more about their next meal.
The rooms leading up to the Hall of Mirrors are just bonkers with crowds. Think of a sports stadium emptying out for every room. Like the Louvre, there were some rooms you just couldn't see some of what you wanted to see in the rooms. Thankfully, the ornate ceilings don't have crowds but even though they tell you not to use selfie sticks there is the odd one poking out in defiance of rules.
Getting into the Hall of Mirrors is nuts but once you are through it about halfway (and after the King's Chambers), you can relax and stretch out a bit and take those selfies that you find so irritating that other people are doing 😜.
Once you are past that, much like being past the Mona Lisa at the Louvre, the crowds subside a bit and you can enjoy more of the venue rather than suffer from crowd anxiety. More ornate architecture and another copy of the coronation of Napoleon. The second part of the tour was more about the French winning battles and wars.
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| Napoleon crossing the Alps - I thought this was a famous painting - where are the throngs of people? |
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| View of the gardens |
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| Not just coffered - also intricately carved - the French were obsessed with nice ceilings |
Now we get to free ourselves from some of the crowds and wander the gardens on what is looking like an absolutely beautiful day. It's about 23C and sunny with an occasional breeze and no humidity, The gardens and the view of the building are pretty amazing from the back - let's call it a "terrace". There are supposed to be operating fountains on Saturday and Sunday but we get hit and miss operation of the fountains. There are many, many of them so I get that it would cost a fortune to run them all all the time but it would have made some of them much nicer to look at.
The gardens here are enormous - we grab a bit to eat at a vendor and we get "French Fried Chicken" and fries for lunch. A french group sits next to us and seems to look down their nose at our "American" choice of food. Carrie pipes in with "Je comprends tous que vous dire" - much like our autistic son Elliot, just because you can't verbalize it, doesn't mean you can't understand everything going on. A good thing to remember when you believe you are speaking in a language that others don't understand. We use the toilet facilities here and much like every other public bathroom they are partly broken, under provisioned and generally not very clean. Public washrooms are few and far between and they are almost all pretty nasty.
We wander through the gardens seeing some snails along the way. They move about as fast as the people through the Palace leading up to the Hall of Mirrors.
We head to the Petit Trianon - part of the Trianon retreat within the Versailles estate. We joked that this was the "cottage of the cottage" with the Grand Trianon being the "cottage" for the palace. It is modest in many places but still has some well appointed rooms and a beautiful set of gardens.
The Grand Trianon was next and yeah, it's not quite a palace, but it isn't exactly a "retreat" or "getaway" from opulence.
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| Who doesn't need a chapel inside their cottage? |
A bit more grounds to walk but we're starting to run out of steam and need coffee and still have to think about the walk back. We find a coffee vendor and another poorly appointed toilet and head back to the palace catching some nice (and even some working!) fountains on the way.
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| This would have looked way better if it was a working fountain |
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| This was Vegas-like |
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| Crepuscular rays in late afternoon sun reflecting off the pond |
We head for the train back and I continue my search I had started earlier for a fancy-schmancy restaurant for this evening. A lot of the Michelin starred restaurants are closed on Sundays and Mondays and I left the reservation to the last minute so I'm not sure we're going to find anything. Carrie is not overly fond of French cuisine either so I don't want something with rare pigeon on the menu. She (and I) don't want something "too stuffy" either as we want to be comfortable and we didn't pack anything super formal for dinner. I luck out on getting a reservation for 9pm at Pavylon Paris - a (single) Michelin starred restaurant that happens to be that quaint place we came across on Day 2 at the southeast end of the Champs-Élysées in the garden setting. We even manage to get the last table on the terrace in a private corner. It's quite lively with a couple of large groups celebrating one occasion or another. Champagne serves as an apéritif along with an amuse-bouche in a tiny little tart style . We decide to go all out and get the 7-course Pavylon menu with the wine-pairing for each course. The wine menu was a bible - probably 30 or so pages of different wines from different regions with different vintages, but we are not wine connoisseurs by any stretch so the wine-pairing made it much simpler. The sommelier attempted to walk us through some choices but this would probably be intimidating a bit even for someone really into fine wine.
There was a lot of seafood and Carrie's not a huge seafood fan but she tried everything. The texture of the sliced sea bass as the first course was a bit advanced for her so she shared it with me (but gotta hand it to her for trying). She ate most of the rest of the seafood and enjoyed it - but I did manage to get an extra clam or two. The fourth course above had changed since our seating - we had some fish with a coconut milk sauce - Carrie really liked that one. Prepared elegantly and with such delicate balances of taste the meal was fantastic. I never expected broth with ravioli to have such complex flavours. The wine pairings were excellent with a sparkling and sweet rosé paired with the rhubarb perfectly. The service was impeccable as well with a team of people seeing to all our needs. These public washrooms weren't the disaster of restrooms that we had become accustomed to but instead had someone guiding you into them on each visit - and likely tidying it up between visits. Three hosts welcome you at the door and take your coat with no pesky tag to have them remember your jacket - that's part of their service. It was truly a once in a lifetime experience to remember.
We head back on the Metro and return to the real world. Probably should have had some other transportation for this experience. Very fancy-schmancy!