Versailles

A few days ago we booked a bike tour through Blue Bike Tours to go around the Palace and Grounds of Versailles.

Versailles was originally started by King Louis XIII as a hunting lodge, to get away from the stress of being a king.  He did a few expansions to the hunting lodge over the years, but it wasn't until King Louis XIV came around that most of the work to Versailles was done.  King Louis XIV did incredible expansions to Versailles, including building a Palace, a 1km long canal, over 1600 fountains and water features, elaborate horse stables, smaller summer houses, and a bunch of other work.  He was also the one who started to use Versailles, instead of Paris, as the official royal palace for the King of France.

His successors, King Louis XV and King Louis XVI also used Versailles as their primary place of residence, each of them adding new elements to Versailles, but not nearly to the same extent of what King Louis XIV did.  It was, however, King Louis XVI who was married to Marie Antoinette, and built her hamlet, and eventually was the king on the throne during the overthrowing of the Monarchy and French Revolution that lead to both of their beheading.

We met up with our tour group at one of the train stations in Paris, just before 9, and together, the 10 of us caught a couple trains out to Versailles, learning the the history of it from our Parisian tour guide, Agnes.

Once we arrived in Versailles we went to pick up our bikes, and then went to a farmers market to purchase some food for lunch, and snacks along the way.  We then hopped on our bikes and were lead by Agnes around the canal, and through some of the hunting grounds, which took us until 12:30 or so.

We kept a pretty good pace on the bikes, stopping at some of the sites to go explore, and here some more of the history from Agnes, who was a history major and had lots of information about Versailles and the royalty that lived there.

One of the best stops was at Marie Antoinette`s Hamlet, which she had built by King Louis XVI in the style of a farm, except she really didn`t know what farm life was like, so the houses were very elaborate inside.  The setting of this Hamlet was very picturesque, and looked like something in Disney Land, with it`s perfectly manicured lawns, gardens, and cute cottages.

From here it was almost 4pm by the time we got to The Palace, and although the lines were considerably shorter than they were when we arrived first thing in the morning, it was still a 1-hour wait to get in, and once we were in, it was PACKED!

It really was too bad that the palace was as packed with people as it was, because it was really beautiful and had lots of grand things to see, and history to learn, (we had a Rick Steves tour, once again).  But, within the first 30 minutes of being crammed into the hot, sweaty, claustrophobia-inducing palace, we were ready to leave, so did, and slowly made our way back on the train back to Paris, (but not before having McDonalds for dinner!)

We went back to the hotel, rested for a couple hours, and then went to a grocery store nearby around 9pm, to grab some snacks, drinks, and food for tomorrow`s breakfast.  We then hopped on the metro and made our way back to the Eiffel Tower once again to enjoy the lights and just sit back and relax and be tourists :)