Palace of Versailles – June 10, 2017

Solo Adventurer 2.0

This morning, I actually woke up sort of on time. My mom had woken me up slightly early because we were going to the Palace of Versailles, one of the top things to do by tourists visiting  Paris.  After getting ready, we walked to Pret-a Manger for breakfast. Then, we took a double-decker train to Versailles, or so we thought. It turns out, we were going in the wrong direction! After wandering around the station for a few minutes, we asked a person working in the station how to get there. Apparently, the train line we needed to take to get to Versailles was closed for that day! Luckily, we decided to take a different RER Line (these trains are different that the Metro, they run between the suburbs), and settled down for a longgg journey.

On the train, we sat on the upper level, and soon I fell asleep. When I woke up, I immediately saw beautiful flowers and other greenery. About 20 minutes later we reached the station, where we then had to walk 25 minutes to get to the Palace of Versailles. My first view of it was awesome, the top of the roofs were covered in gold! Before we could actually see the roofs up close, we had to wait in a 1 hour and 20 minutes long line. It was fillleeeddd with sweaty, hot human bodies. I was so glad I had brought shorts to change into.

Outside the Main Gate.

A carving inside.

Inside, the rooms were filled with splendor, gold, and lots of paintings of dead people and battles. My favorite part was the Hall of Mirrors. Did you know Marie Antoinette had to take off all of her Austrian clothes, including undergarments(!), and walk across the Hall of Mirrors to wear French clothes. I learned this from a book I have had for a while. After walking through the castle, we went to Angelina’s, again. I got a salmon salad, and for dessert my mom and I shared Angelina’s Famous Dessert, Mont-Blanc. It was like chocolate ice cream, but in spaghetti form with whipped cream and sugar. Instead of getting hot chocolate, I got cold chocolate! It was delicious, cold dark chocolate and ice (it was a very hot day).

The salmon salad.

The yummy dessert.

Outside, in the gardens,  we bought tickets for the musical water shows. I think the gardens were my favorite part. There were intricate displays of roses, as well as other flowers. I would have loved to lived in the Palace, if only so I could stay in the gardens. We also saw Marie Antoinette’s palace, the Grand Trianon, or her personal palace. At around 5:20 p.m., the grand finale of water and music shows happened at Neptune fountain. We had to walk to the other side of the gardens to get to it. While watching the show, we were sprayed by mist from the water fountain, which was a nice change of weather.

The Neptune fountains.

When the show was over, we decided that we deserved ice cream (we would probably burn those calories in three minutes walking at the garden), and tried to find our way to Dauphin’s Grove (where the refreshments were located), but we ended up in a different place than we intended. That is the only bad part about the garden. The hedges are so tall that it seems like a maze! Even a person who worked at the Palace didn’t know how to get there! When we finally reached the cafe, I got a Magnum Double Caramel ice cream and a tomato/mozzarella panini. When we were done eating, we left the gardens and walked back to the train. Once again the train was double-decker, and we sat on top. Once we reached back to Paris, we dropped off our bags at the hotel room. Then, we walked to Pizza Hut, and ordered a barbecue pizza. We had to wait 15 minutes, so we went back to our room and chilled. After dinner it was off to bed, as we had to get up early to leave for Brussels, the land of frites (fries), chocolate, and waffles. Yummm!

A part of the garden.

One of the hedges.