A Versailles Valentine's and 6 Tips for Your Trip

We live about a 15-minute drive from Versailles, so it's an easy place to take visitors.  On Valentine's Day we took one of my oldest and dearest friends to see this historical chateau and to enjoy a Valentine's treat.  It was such a gorgeous and mild sunny day!  Tip number one if you're driving is to enter at the back gate near Marie Antoinette's Domain.  You can drive your car inside the grounds and park for just 6 euros.

We didn't visit the domain of Marie Antoinette on this trip, but it is one of our favorite parts of the estate and another great option for when you don't have a lot of time.  We also love Le Grand Trianon.

Tip number two is to read a little something about what you're going to see before your visit.  The chateau's website has some great summaries of the different areas.  It's a huge estate so if you're not planning on spending a full day you might enjoy your visit more if you pick the spot that interests you the most.  Having a little knowledge about what you're going to see makes such a difference in your level of enjoyment.  

You can choose between two directions when you walk into the chateau, and for a quicker visit I always choose the side with the Hall of Mirrors.  I also take a picture of this hallway every time.

I love the rich green color of that wall covering.

Kristen came to us from Thailand, and we found an unexpected connection between the two countries we're living in at the moment when we saw a special display of a gift presented to the king of France from a visiting ambassador from what was then called Siam.  

Tip number three if you're planning to visit Angelina's for that famous Parisian hot chocolate, chocolat chaud, is why not go to the Versailles location?  It might be a little less crowded than on the Rue de Rivoli.  Tip number four is to order the pretty dessert, and tip number five is to share desserts and hot chocolates because you can't handle the sweetness and richness all on your own!

Tip number six is to walk off your desserts in the gardens and take a few minutes to sit on a bench by the reflecting pool for a few minutes and watch the rowers and the swans go by before leaving.

Le Grand Trianon

Visiting the palace in Versailles is a popular touristy thing to do when you visit Paris, and we wanted to give K.J.'s parents a glimpse.  They got the more intimate tour because our favorite areas are around the Grand Trianon, the Petit Trianon, and Marie Anotoinette's hamlet.  It's a great place to ride bikes, so while the kids and our husbands went on a cycling adventure  T and I went inside the Grand Trianon, a smaller palace commissioned by Louis XIV.  I love this pretty blue room!

It has been a few years since I last walked through the Grand Trianon, and I was excited to see the terrace again.  It opens up to gardens on the left and a courtyard on the right and is so beautiful!

There's something about that open, light-filled space with that black and white floor that is stunning.

My other reason for preferring this back corner of the Versailles property is that there are gardens with flowers and grass.  The more formal gardens are all shrubs and perfectly trimmed trees along straight dusty paths.  

Our intention was to walk through the gardens to the hamlet Marie Antoinette had built so she could play at life as a peasant.  Unfortunately, I have long had a bone to pick with arrows on French signs.  They twist and turn and point in directions that don't always seem to indicate the direction they want you to go.  All that to say, we took a wrong turn at a sign and missed the hamlet.  We were treated instead to gorgeous fall trees in a quiet space devoid of all other visitors, so we weren't complaining.

I'd be happy to be lost here any day of the week.

Franco Fridays: The Gardens of Versailles

If pictures of tulips would lift your spirits on a Friday morning, then this is the blog post for you.  Tulips seem to be the flower of Spring around Paris.

I saw tulips in colors I'd never seen tulips before, and I'd also never seen a tulip with this fringe around the petals.

 Does he look like a prosperous landowner, surveying his estate?

Or at least a famous novelist?

Well-ordered and Beautiful

I think KJ thought it was an odd memory, but the memories of the clouds in France are really vivid to me.  They were really big and beautiful and always changing.

 

The gardens were so massive that we agreed it must take a massive amount of people, constantly pruning hedges to keep it so immaculate.  But where were they?  We saw no one and imagined an army of little gardeners coming out at night.

It's obvious that KJ and I got separated from the group here, because there are several pictures of me making faces at the camera (which I'm refraining from posting) and a few gems of KJ hiding behind shrubbery.  

Since we went into the gardens as everything was shutting down, we missed out on the magnificence of the fountains.  If there's ever a "next time" for us in France, we'd like to go back to see them.

What a great group.

Farewell, Versailles.

Back to the train.

As an aside, I was hungry at the station and decided to buy a snack out of a machine.  They had Lay's potato chips, but I got incredibly thrown off when I saw "Nature" flavored.  I was completely confused and kind of disgusted by what possible flavor "Nature" would taste like when after a discussion with a French-speaker, I felt embarrassed.  Because of course, Nature in French means something like the original or natural flavor.  I think I just got thrown off because the brand name was in English, and so I wasn't thinking about the other writing on the bag being French.  Because who would want nature-flavored potato chips?  I went with Barbecue.