Tuesday, September 10, 2024 – Versailles.

Travel Blog 3 Minutes
Versailles.

I signed up to take guided tour of Versailles today. The meeting point was a couple of miles away so I got up early and had a quick breakfast at Bo & Mie.

A chocolate croissant and fresh squeezed orange juice. The breakfast of champions.

After breakfast I walked a couple of blocks to the nearest Metro station to see if I could successfully use the Paris Metro to travel to the meeting point for my tour to Versailles. I am happy to report that traveling on the Metro was easy peasy. When I was at the train station on Saturday I bought a Navigo Easy card that allows me unlimited access to any type of public transportation while I am in Paris. At the Metro station there is a turnstile and a card reader. I tapped my Navigo Easy card on the card reader and the turnstile opened and welcomed me to the Paris Metro. How easy is that?

This is the Metro station. Not much going on at 8:00 AM. Apparently the Parisians are not morning people.

I got on the train and 20 minutes later I was at the Metro stop where I was going to meet the Versailles tour group.

This is Will the tour guide. In order to be a tour guide in Paris you need an undergraduate degree and a specialized masters degree in tour guiding.
This is the tour bus from Paris to Versailles. It was a little bit of a rattle trap.

When we got to Versailles Will gave us our entrance tickets and whisked us through the VIP no standing in line entrance.

When we got inside it was a wall to wall madhouse. Little did I know that the Louvre is closed on Tuesdays. Every tourist that can’t go to the Louvre on Tuesdays goes to Versailles. My pro tip here is to stay away from Versailles on Tuesdays.

The ceilings in the rooms on the tour are all painted like this. I got dizzy looking up at these magnificent paintings.
This is the famous Hall of Mirrors.
This is the king’s bedchamber.
This is the queen’s bedchamber.

At about 1:00 PM, after a very informative tour of the rooms in the main castle, the tour ended and Will started to shepherd everyone out to the bus. I asked him if there was more to see and he said heck yes. I told him that I was going to bail on the bus trip back and spend the afternoon exploring the rest of Versailles.

After Will and the rest of the tour left I meandered around until I was in the Gallery of Battles. This is a long room that is twice as big as the Hall of Mirrors. Every major battle fought by the French from before Charlemagne to after Napoleon was commemorated by massive paintings.

The Siege of Yorktown.
This is my favorite painting in the Gallery of Battles.
Thanks to France the United States was able to defeat the British and win our independence.

After I finished touring the Gallery of Battles I went outside and walked around the gardens.

This guy is using a GPS device to plant flowers in one of the geometric flower gardens.
This is one of the many fountains in the gardens with the Grand Canal in the background. They used the Grand Canal for some of the 2024 Olympic events.

While I was wandering around the gardens I decided it was time for a late lunch.

A hamburger, fries and a beer. I was starved and it tasted great.
The next stop on my self guided tour was the Chateaux Trianon. This was built for the king to have a little hideaway palace.
This is the road leading up to the Chateaux Trianon.
This is the Chateaux Trianon.
Apparently the king liked to play billiards.
This is the breezeway connecting the wings of the Chateaux.
The next stop on my self guided tour was the Petit Trianon. This was the queen’s hideaway palace.
The queen had quite a collection of dishes.
The flower gardens at the Petit Trianon were in full bloom.
Fresh squeezed orange juice machine on the back of a golf cart. Brilliant!
The Fountain of Neptune.

I stayed at Versailles until 5:00 PM and the hoofed it to the train station where I took a train back to Paris.

I didn’t get back to my hotel until 7:00 PM so I decided to have a quick dinner. This is a smoked salmon and cheese sandwich on a poppy seed bun. It was delicious.
Another Gran Cru Stracciatella for dessert.

That’s it for this evening from Paris. I hope you are having a wonderful day wherever you are.

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Published by abeandmarkonthecamino

I've been retired from the Union Pacific Railroad since 2017. I've been planning to walk the Camino for about 6 months and can't wait to get started.

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