Paris Part 5: Versailles

The Palace of Versailles. Versailles (verse-eye) used to be the hunting cottage to the king before it turned into the grandeur that it is. We are again grateful to an insider tip to purchase tickets online to avoid the lineup. And a lineup  it was.

We gratifyingly bypassed the glaring line once again and jaunted into the first part of the place. The size of this thing truly is impressive but more impressive are the gardens in the back. Versailles is situated about 20 kilometres south west of Paris and is on nearly 800 hectares all combined with all its buildings and gardens. I forgot that math, so I had to look it up. That is nearly 1,980 acres. Or 8 square kilometers if that registers more. Or 3 square miles for all you Americans. In short, the palace is do-able but then coming to the edge of the gardens, it takes a deliberate breath in and a small mutter, we can do this.

This is also after being herded through the palace like cattle. Poor Micah had it the worst though, she was at butt level and so enjoyed the crowds even less than we did. By the time we got up close to where the king used to eat his dinner with a small crowd watching him, she didn’t really care.

At the gardens we were able to let out a big breath and take in a bigger one. What a view and what a piece of land. Luckily half way down the path there was a little canteen in which we supplied ourselves with our lunch of late, a ham and cheese baguette sandwich. Our end goal of the gardens was to see the get away palace of Marie Antoinette and the small pauper village she had made to make her feel more like a normal human being. I have to say, this was the most restored and intact “medieval city” that we had come across, I suppose it must be from the actual lack of use in its day. Nonetheless, it was very beautiful and but the end of it, we were 100% done with walking.

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