Escaping the city

Today we are doing what we came back to Paris for, heading out to Versailles for the day.

It was an early start to meet our tour group. We signed up for a cycling tour with Fat Tyre Tours. We have done several tours in Europe with these guys and they are bloody good. Our tour guide was Nick, an expat Welshman who married a French girl and now finds himself living in Paris.

Versailles is located about half an hour outside of Paris. The palace was the principle royal residence of France from 1682 under Louis XIV until the start of the revolution in 1789. It was also where the treaty of Versailles was signed after WWI in the aptly named Hall of Mirrors. Some serious history here.

After arriving by train and collecting our bikes we headed out to the market to buy our lunch. Second picnic in two days, we are getting good at this. There were even

compliments on our French when Jo ordered coffees. Once we had a good assortment for our picnic and had topped up the energy levels with a crepe we were off to the palace.

The structure of our day had changed due to the Crown Prince of Japan visiting the palace in the afternoon. This meant it was shutting at 1pm. As such went straight into the palace. The tour through the palace follows a one way route through the State Rooms with an audio guide. The State Rooms are really impressive, but were so packed with people that it was hard to move in some places. It is also easy to see why there was a revolution, the grandeur and excess of this place is incredible. The highlights in the palace are definitely the first room with its massive paintings, the stories about the waking of the king ceremonies every morning where he was dressed by his brother and the paintings of the battles in the Museum to French Victories. It's pretty telling that the series of paintings ends with Napoleon in 1827.....King Louis the XIV was certainly an eccentric individual.

Once through the inside, we went out to look at the gardens. Wow! The gardens are huge and very ornate. They feature amazing fountains and manicured gardens as far as the eye could see. We had to be quick here as we needed to be back at the bikes for the second half of the tour.

After nearly being left behind, even though making it back at the specified time, and then getting told off for lagging behind after getting stuck at a red light we headed into the grounds for the second half of the day. As it was lunchtime it might have been the hunger talking but we weren’t really that impressed with our tour guide at this point.

Part two of the tour included cycling around the gardens and stopping for our picnic. We stopped for lunch beside the huge man made lake in the shape of a cross that is in the grounds. One of King Louis’ elephants actually escaped and drowned in here it is that big. While we heard a brief history of the palace we were busy trying to avoid the wasps that were buzzing around so we could eat our lunch and sup on our wine. Once finished we were back on the bikes to explore the massive grounds. We saw Napoleons Summer House, King Louis XVI’s house for his mistresses, of which there were many all living together, and also the farming village that was a favorite of Mary Antoinette. This village is set up as it was in the mid 1700's. Here we heard the sad story of Mary Antoinette and how she really is portrayed as a villain in French history, when she really didn't want to be there in the first place and also the history around French politics of the time and what led to the Revolution. Crazy history. There were some incredible vegetable gardens which we were rushed through with the guide telling us “I don’t think you'll find anything interesting in the gardens! Time to move on!” hmmm obviously not a fan of

zucchini flowers! Nearby was the Temple of Love which was accompanied by a rather embarrassing story about the King and how he wasn't producing an heir......

On the way out of the grounds we cycled past some kids playing rugby, great to see, and the security for the Prince's visit. Once back at the shop we dropped off the bikes and said our goodbyes. We navigated the train and metro back to Paris with some friendly Australians and were relieved to have a wee lie down once we got home! Dinner tonight was at a local wine bar in Montmartre to celebrate/commiserate our last night in Europe. This trip is going so fast!