Palace of Versailles, Paris

Plan a trip to Paris

Getting there 

Travelling Europe by train? Just out these Eurail options. Or book a flight from anywhere in Europe using EasyJet.

Where to stay

For affordable hostels check out Adveniat Paris near the Champs-Elysées or Le Regent in Montmartre (If you book using this link I get a small commission at no extra cost to you).

Visit the Palace of Versailles

One cannot visit Paris without seeing the Palace of Versaille. So off I went taking the long trek to get there (one and a half hours by a few trains) and arrived in very cold Versaille. I waited in a queue for 40 minutes to buy a ticket only to discover at the front of the queue that as I have a student visa I can get in for free and so don’t need a ticket. It was wonderful news to find out that I didn’t have to pay the 18 euro to get in (about R300) but very irritating that I had wasted 40 minutes for nothing.

 

I soon realised that 40 minutes was nothing when I arrived at the end of this crazy long queue. It literally wrapped around 10 times. So I braced the cold for two and a half hours before I finally entered the Palace. Near the end it even started to rain but thankfully I was nearly inside. 

I got my audio guide and began the tour around the Palace. It is so grand, golden, ornate and filled with chandeliers and paintings.

This was Marie Antionette’s bed. An interesting fact that I overheard from a passing tour guide was that the Queen’s bed was bigger than the King’s bed because the King would always visit the Queen and never the other way round. So bed company’s actually have it wrong. A queen sized bed should be bigger than a king sized bed.

I completed the tour of the Chateau in one and a half hours. By that time it was raining and getting dark so I didn’t have time to see the gardens. It wasn’t too tragic though because I figured that they wouldn’t look very pretty now since it is winter and so I can rather come back another time just to see the gardens.

So you may ask; after about three hours of queuing in the cold, was it really worth it visiting the Palace of Versailles. To put it this way, if I’d paid 18 euro for that experience I would have been very irritated. That fact that I got in for free made it not as bad. But still I think it is very overpriced. It definitely was my least enjoyable experience of Paris. But it was an experience nonetheless.

Planning a trip to Paris? Check out my blog posts on the an evening in Paris, Montmartre, the Eiffel Tower, and the Louvre to plan a perfect 5 days in Paris.

If you’re visiting more of France on your trip why not check out my French regional guides:

South of France: Provence and the French Riveria

The Champagne region in Epernay

A winter skiing trip to Tignes

The Rhone Alps region: Thonon-Les-Bains, Annecy and Lyon