It was the 7th of December and the last full day in Paris for Max and Di. Max had been keen on a visit to Versailles and it has been a long time since we had visited in 2012, with a then very little Astrid, so we were happy to go back.
We again started our day with a selection of pastries and delicious croissants. It’s hard when you have to step metres from your apartment to get your carbs! Soren was using his downtime to edit videos of the goldfish museum ‘Art Aquarium’ in Tokyo. An obsession that lasted a good couple of weeks of the holiday….
Off to Versailles……
The plan for the day was to head out to Versailles. When Anto and I had visited with a 14 month old Astrid we did a very fun bike tour which took in most of the grounds and a bit of the palace. Di had also visited on her trip 6 years earlier but Max, Soren and Zinnia hadn’t ever been.
Of course the weekend of 7/8 December was the reopening of Notre Dame and it resulted in no end of chaos in Paris. We discovered the RER-C was not running in the morning due to ‘social disruptions’ i.e. protests, so we had a slightly longer trip out via the TGV. We managed not to lose Soren in the crowds but he did lose his very good beanie between the metro and TGV which wasn’t great. This was another in the very long list of Soren’s lost things on the trip.
Once we arrived in town and walked the 1.5km into the Palace the lines were already long and the next available tickets were for 12pm and it was only 10.30am. We filled in the time with some coffee and hot chocolates and then commenced lining up, and entertaining ourselves watching young ladies wearing very little, accompanied by ridiculous shoes. They were freezing in their inappropriate outfits while posing for their social media posts. It amused us no end for the rather tedious wait.
Soren and Zinnia were already impressed with amount of gold and ‘shiny things’ on the palace, as well as the general size of all the buildings.
Inside the main palace……
Once into the palace we wandered around with the crowds, admiring the giant rooms, excessively large artworks, endless finery, depictions of man-battles and of course, plenty of gold.
On our 2012 visit to the palace we did wander around the inside of the palace during a break on our bike tour, but we only had a fairly short time, so today we were happy to wander at a more leisurely pace. We have visited a lot of palaces in various countries between then and this visit and Versailles continues to be one of the most impressive.
The sheer size of the rooms and pictures has to be seen to be believed. Even the fireplaces are giant with giant logs!
We managed to keep track of all the children, though Zinnia was keen to speed through and try and lose us all. We were already glad for her bright yellow coat that made it easy for us to spot her at a distance. Zinnia was super impressed at all the giant paintings and rooms!
As usual the hall of mirrors was spectacular and we could only imagine what it was like to live in the palace.
As we wandered around the palace we caught glimpses of the grounds. There was still a lot of dismantling of the things that had been put up to host the equestrian events of the recent Olympics.
There are so many rooms to admire, although if gold wasn’t your favourite colour though you might have a problem!
We were impressed by the giant battle photos and the depictions of the poor horses in battle who generally seemed to be having a bad time. By the time we got to the last couple of galleries Zinnia was well and truly tired and had apparently had enough horse pictures!
The windy gardens of Versailles
After we had explored the palace, we head out into the gardens, where it was definitely freezing at 9 degrees (yes we hadn’t yet fully acclimatised to winter), and insanely windy so the wind chill wasn’t pleasant.
The children were using up all their excess energy running everywhere. We had originally planned to cover more of the other buildings and grounds but decided we’d leave that to another visit in warmer weather when we could hire bikes. We did see more of the palace than we had on our previous visit where we’d spent more time outside so it was well worth the re-visit.
Even in Winter the gardens were still beautiful. All those hedged must take a lot of maintaining!
Soren decided he needed a photo of Anto and I in the gardens. It was certainly wintery and windy!!!
The views over the garden from the terrace are lovely, even if the wind was trying to blow us over. Last time we visited we rode around all the lakes but we could not cover that amount of ground on foot. Sadly bikes weren’t available during the Winter months so we will just have to make a return visit in the warmer months.
Zinnia was trying to get a really good view of the gardens. A very small Astrid did the same thing at the same spot 12 years earlier!
The kids continued to keep warm by running around like crazy people. They had definitely worked off their breakfast!
Back to Paris we go…..
All feeling a bit cold and weary we decided we’d seen enough and it was time to head back. By now the RER C was back running so after the windy walk back into town we found some with some train station snacks to tide us over on the trip back as we hadn’t stopped for lunch.
The RER-C was thankfully a slightly closer walk and easy trip back into Paris. Soren also managed to not lose any further items of clothing on the return journey.
On the short walk back to our apartment we picked up some late afternoon baguettes for lunch/afternoon tea/carb re-filling. With only a short time left in France we definitely had to get our fill of French baguette, butter and cheese!
The kids were slightly shattered from all the long days in our first week of our trip so unanimously voted for rests and staying in the apartment. Max and Di also were tired out from all the walking and stairs. Anto drew the short straw and got to head to the laundromat to do the washing, although it was quiet there without the kids so it maybe wasn’t so bad 🙂
Paradis Latin
Said kids did not want to go out for dinner and to see Christmas lights (did I mention tired??) so it was apartment pizzas for dinner, accompanied by lots of arguments from the tired teenager who turns feral at 6pm and needs to sleep. The kids were eventually placated with some Netflix movies. They all enjoyed ‘Sing’ to, accompanied by Max singing.
Anto and I had to contemplate going out of the warm apartment into the cold. With the option of Max and Granny being available to babysit in Paris we’d booked the cabaret show Paradis Latin, for a night out sans kids. This was a great idea back in hot Australia. Now the thought of going out in the cold late at night was less appealing!
We did manage to extract ourselves and head out in the cold and drizzle via the metro, and across the river to the Latin quarter.
Anto had booked the tickets with what we thought was a glass of wine but turned out to be a whole bottle of French Champagne. Oh well, someone had to drink it! We had not booked the dinner show but did enjoy the last bit of the dinner entertainment as we drank our wine and waited for the main show to start. There were no photos or videos allowed of the performers but we managed to grab a couple of quick phone selfies of us out at night and enjoying our champagne!
The show was excellent. Our French only held up for about a 1/3 of the dialogue but the dancing, sparkles, glitter and not much clothing translated pretty well.
It was still wet and cold when we got out and there were a ridiculous number of people on the metros at midnight, I guess it was Saturday! We were feeling cold and weary though, so decided to head straight back to the 2nd and our apartment. The children were all present and accounted for when we returned even if we found out the next morning that the adults had fallen asleep before the kids did and the kids continued to watch movies so bed time wasn’t as early as we planned!
Up next….
Chaos caused by the re-opening of Notre Dame, wet wanders of Paris, the Seine, the Louvre, Christmas markets, crepes and Italian dinners and hanging out with our Scottish friends.
