Travel: Palace of Versailles

Palace of Versailles is about an hour outside of Paris by train. We train hopped twice and made it in about 48 minutes with a 12 minute walk through the city of Versailles.

Arrive early, since as you can see from the photo above, the line is long to get through security. Took us about 45 minutes to get into the palace. Once in we used our phones with the Palace of Versailles app to listen to the in-depth tour of the royal residence.

Palace of Versailles

This place is vast – so vast that it’ll probably take you 3 hours to see everything. We spent about 2.5 hours here total, including the gardens. One of the biggest impacts for me was the cost of having to upkeep everything. From paintings to landscaping, all the way to hosting large parties in the gallery. And at the taxpayers expense – sheesh! And, not to mention that those beds are so small. Seems so out of balance.

See how tiny the bed is? I don’t get it.

These private quarters where the royals would read, entertain guests with music, or play cards. I like the minty colour and the white walls – oddly, sort of in style these days, too.

The hall of mirrors – meant to mirror all the windows, the light, and make the vast space seem even more vast.

Overall, this place is worth checking out. It’ll be busy, that’s for sure – and if you’ve got all day and are a huge history buff, you might even consider signing up for a tour. The Paris Museum Pass got us our entry into the Palace, yet if you’re buying tickets be sure to get them ahead of time since that line is separate from the 45 minute one we stood in. The girls in front of us had to wait twice – once for tickets then again to get into the palace.

Thanks for visiting – happy travelling!