Versailles

One star.

Tourist trap.

Do not recommend.

Okay, I’m joking…sort of. What an overcrowded mess!

But let’s start at the beginning of the day when I went downstairs to get the “breakfast” 5€ for a coffee and two pastries. I paid for both myself and Rebecca and the girl asked which pastries I wanted but I was on the phone so I told her I would wait for Rebecca to arrive. I poured myself coffee and sat down. The coffee was cold. As soon as Rebecca arrived the girl asked about the pastries again and I asked if I could have a piece of bread instead and she said no because it has to be a pastry. I warned Rebecca about the cold coffee. She took from a different pot but it was still cold. They offered a third pot, also cold. I asked the girl if instead of the pastries and coffee, could I just switch out my 5€ for a cafe au lait from the espresso machine. She said no, we already paid for the combo. I asked then if I could just have the money back, we don’t want the pastries or the cold coffee and she said no, we already took items. Of course I was infuriated by then and asked her what items we had taken besides cold coffee which we are returning and asking for a refund. She said it was impossible to refund us. So the hostel stole our 10€ and Eloise is getting a bad review from me. Rule #1 of France “the French do not accommodate”.

We walked to the train and on the way found a delicious boulangerie thank goodness.

We arrive at Versailles at 9:10 and we have 10am tickets. We wait at the front of the 10:00 line and watch as people try to enter the wrong way and it becomes progressively funnier as they realize how far the back of the line is. Waiting in line in the sun is much more enjoyable than in the shade.

But once we got inside, the place was an overcrowded nightmare of tourism. The entire was through the rooms we were barely able to read anything with how crowded it was. I felt so sad to see people going so quickly, taking pictures of all of the artwork seemingly without any contemplation or admiration, and of course, rushing to the hall of mirrors for their Instagram moment. Rebecca and I were both horrified watching people taking staged videos and setting up tripods and wondering if people actually came here to learn anything at all outside of having their Instagram moment.

I didn’t take too many pictures (you can see everything on line it turns out) but I do love a Bernini sculpture so I took this one.

When we finally got to the end, we were glad to leave the building and go find bikes to rent and find some lunch. We rented bikes and after some google searching, biked to the Sunday market and bought ourselves another little picnic.

After lunch we biked over to the Petit Trianon and the Queens Hamlet, other properties that are very close by, much less crowded, and much more rustic. We enjoyed these, especially the queens hamlet which had some nice gardens.

The bikes had to be returned and we were not allowed to bike around the actual gardens so we returned those and went to go see some fountains which were supposedly set to music. Good news is, we did get to see two musical fountain shows. Bad news is, we long saw two because the fountains were mostly off and we were too tired to continue to walk around the absolutely ginormous gardens. At the end I said to Rebecca, “I get the idea”. We walked back to the entrance / exit which was up a bit if a hill and then to some stairs to which Rebecca said “you know what I love about walking up a hill? When it ends with a staircase.”

So overall, I totally would recommend the town of Versailles and most of the places but the main building was really a let down.