15/04/2024 – Old world glamour, the good bits

Now we are back in Paris, with some familiarity and better weather, we plan a few more “splurgy” days. To start, we spent Thursday in Versailles.

In the mid 17th Century, the Sun King, Louis XIV, reimagined his father’s hunting lodge into a vast palace, with formal gardens and parkland. Versailles was the seat of power during France’s golden age, full of silks, marble, gilding and, famously, mirrors. Later, his granddaughter-in-law, Marie Antoinette, played shepherdess and reportedly said “Let them eat cake”. It was, of course, sacked and ransacked during the first French Revolution. Later still, Emperor Napoleon redesigned the estate for his summer residence. Many more important people did important things there, including ending the First World War.

Our local branch line goes to the station in Versailles town for 2.20 Euro. It’s a pleasant walk to the Palace (past the Starbucks, into which we stopped on our way home, of course). We splurged on “full package” tickets – timed entry to the palace, general entry to the gardens, both Trianons and the Trianon estate.

The sky threatened rain all day, but it stayed dry and mild (and lowered moodily in our photos). We covered 21km and used all our passes. Acres of garden and parkland remain unexplored.

We went in 2020, when they opened the park to give people a place to go during lockdown. That was July: hot, dry, browned (both us and the grounds). April is a beautiful time to visit. The lawns are fresh green, the trees budding, the parks full of artfully planted flowering specimens, lilacs and birdsong. They play opera in the formal gardens, to somewhat recreate the ambiance of the Ancien Régime, though, the fountains are so water-intensive they now only flow for paid or state events.

Even a gloomy Thursday in April is busy. The palaces have queues, though largely because the security protocols provide amateur visitors with instructions only in French or English. Once inside, there was elbow room, which is by no means guaranteed. Versailles is one of the world’s great attractions, with 15 million visitors annually. For comparison, the UK got 31 million tourists in 2022. That’s 3 whole countries, and a province.

We experienced that much congestion only once, on a guided tour of the Vatican in 2018. Carey describes lifting his feet in the Hall of Maps and simply being carried along to the Sistine Chapel by the crush. We went back, because I wanted to see the Etruscan collection – crickets. The Louvre is the same: Mona Lisa? Fighting for air. Dutch painting? Even the curator is on his mobile ... In Versailles palace, though, there are only must-sees.

I was happily surprised by the small numbers at the Queen’s Hamlet, the charming faux village on the Trianon estate, with added petting zoo. Most were school groups. The Hamlet is legendary, picturesque, and has goats! It is also 2 miles from the main palace, (returning uphill), which, apparently, thins the crowds.