One Day More

  ONE DAY MORE

October 31

Some of you may recognize the phrase used as today's title. It's a song from the powerful musical based on Victor Hugo's classic, Les Miserables, of which the last 3 lines are ...

And that's what we had -- one more day to enjoy Paris and France. We had planned to taper down our pace, and today the only thing to which we were committed was a visit to the Palace of Versailles. We had our tickets, courtesy of the Museum Pass, and we had a reservation to begin our tour at 10:00AM. According to all sources, it would take us about an hour to get from GSL to Versailles, and we'd begin by Metro before transferring to a suburban train. We had a light breakfast, then got away on time. Traffic on the Metro was heavy because it was rush hour, but the train was not crowded. Oh, and as I had mentioned, we were out of days on our Metro Visite pass, so had to buy round trip tickets to Versailles and back, which again were reasonably priced (though there would be a surprise later). It was overcast and cool, as every morning in Paris had been (and come to think of it, all of our mornings in France except one in Normandy), but again no rain. Merci, Mon Dieu! Our streak of good luck continues.

Versailles is one of those iconic places like the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe, and the Louvre that seem essential for visitors to France. All of the photos and videos I had seen of the Palace and the Gardens were glorious, and undoubtedly its place in history as residence and palace of the early Kings and of the site where the Armistice ending The Great War was signed elevated it in my eyes. I knew it was, like Giverny, a bit out of the way (~11 miles NW of Paris), but I felt like we had to say we'd been there. Apparently I'm not alone in that view; it's reported that Versailles has 15 million visitors a year.

An interesting question to me was "Why Versailles?" When and how did it become "a thing"? Now it's an hour's ride outside of Paris by train, but what kind of journey must it have been in the early 1600's, when the future King Louis XIII discovered the area on a hunting trip? He returned and enjoyed it after he was crowned King in 1610, eventually deciding to build a country residence, which was completed in 1634, and which through several succeeding monarchs morphed into both residence and palace. As centuries passed kings came and went, and their desire to use Versailles did likewise. There were periods of building and those of neglect. Its guests during its heyday included Pope Pius VII, Tsar Peter the Great, and American ambassador Benjamin Franklin. Surprisingly, the Palace survived the Revolution unscathed (too far for a mob to travel?), even though its occupants, King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, most assuredly did not. The palace was moved from Versailles back to Paris in 1783, never to return. In 1833 the French government chose to turn it into a museum. Through the years, however, it has played a significant diplomatic role in world affairs. Examples are the signing of the Treaty of 1783 in which England joined France in recognizing American Independence, as well as the Armistice that ended World War I. 

Today it's possible to visit the Palace of Versailles, residence of Kings and Queens, and its Hall of Mirrors, royal chapel, and impressive art collection; the 2,000 acre Gardens; and two smaller buildings, the Grand and the Petit Trianons, which were used primarily as residences and to host visitors. Not wanting to spend the entire day at Versailles, we chose to see only the Palace. (Initially we had planned to see the Gardens too, but the season and some landscaping work combined with the size to make us rethink that. We just looked over the fence.) The majesty and grandeur of the architecture and art of the Palace were well worth the time and money (especially since it was included as a "deal" on our Paris Museum pass)!

It's a hard place to miss

Visitors are welcomed by
the Sun King himself

Upon arriving at Rive Droite, one of the 3 train stations at Versailles (golden opportunity for confusion, as we'll see), we followed the signs and the crowd through town to the Palace. It was about a 15 minute walk. As one nears it, the first thing that becomes obvious is that it's enormous -- 20,000 acres, they say. We followed the by now familiar drill: queue up according to the time slot of our reservation, wait and sigh, proceed through security, grab our audio guide, and dive into the throng. Honestly, it was initially as overwhelming as the Louvre would've been without our guide. The place is massive, the crowd equally so, and there's just so much to see. We found the audio guide to be almost a nuisance -- TMI (we had to fly back tomorrow!) -- and it was hard to know where to start and what to skip, knowing we couldn't see it all. Eventually we wandered around enough to kinda get into the flow and to enjoy the splendor and the art. (If I had it to do over, I'd have sprung for the guided tour.) Here are some sights we enjoyed:

Group entrance to Palace

Apollo Served by the Nymphs - Girardon

Royal Chapel from 1st level

Royal Chapel from upper level

Ceiling in Hall of Mirrors

Napoleon Crossing the Alps - David

French "war bonnet"

Displays of Crusades and conquests

La Pucelle (Joan of Arc) - Craig

An American in Paris ... well, the suburbs

Gardens of Versailles

Despite having taken only an abridged tour of Versailles we spent almost 4 hours there, including time for lunch at one of the restaurants in the Palace (surprisingly good!). And we weren't alone that day. Though not a Louvre-sized crowd, we shared the Palace with at least an Orsay-sized one ... and frankly after 4 days of rubbing elbows with our fellow tourists, solitude was quite attractive. So we hopped the train* and headed back to the Albar to pack, have dinner, and get a good night's sleep before our return to the U.S. the next day. [ Perhaps we even clicked our heels together, but hey, Dorothy said it first.]

*I made mention a couple of times above of the train and train stations. It turned out that the agent who had sold us the round-trip ticket from GSL to Versailles had for reasons known only to him made our return trip from a different station from the one where we arrived. Not knowing this, we naturally walked back to the Rive Droite Station only to learn that our return ticket was no good there -- we were finally told that our ticket was for one of the other Versailles stations, which was a 15 - 20 minute walk away. After fuming for a minute we "ate" our return tickets and bought ones for Rive Droite so we could return the way we came. They weren't expensive, and our timing was good -- our train back to Paris pulled in about 5 minutes later.

When we had spoken to our hotel staff about good dinner spots within easy walking distance from the Albar, one of the places mentioned was La Pepiniere, a brasserie just down the Rue Pepiniere from the hotel. We checked the menu and decided it was a good place to enjoy our last French dinner. We had a delicious, relaxing meal with good service, and enjoyed a nice conversation with an American couple from Pittsburgh who were sitting next to us. It was a nice evening to cap off a fulfilling week.