DAY III- Thursday, May 21st

We were up bright and early for the trip to the Palace of Versailles!!!! I am fully convinced this is my favorite place on the planet honestly. And I DIDN’T EVEN SEE ALL OF IT! So needless to say, I definitely hope to go back to further explore at some point. After doing a lot of research, I learned that the Palace and surrounding gardens are massive and really are a whole day experience either way- a lot of recommendations I read said to split it and only focus on either the gardens or the palace and then to not have much else planned for your day. For that reason, the Palace was the only thing on our itinerary this day.

You do have to book and pay for tickets with a timed entry to get in. I bought us 11 am tickets, the palace was about a 40 minute drive from our hotel and I didn’t want to have to get up too early to make it there. We got an uber to take us and got there right in time to join our 11 am line that was just forming. We skipped breakfast because I read there was a cafe on site with delicious donuts!

I don’t want to sound like a broken record here, but I absolutely love history and it’s probably one of my most annoying traits to my husband (lol). I read everything, every sign in a museum or historical building and in buildings especially, I like to really “sit” in the room so to speak and just imagine what it would have been like to live there during that time period. The Palace of Versailles was like all of my wildest history nerd dreams come true- imagine the parties and all the beautiful gowns that walked the halls that I was now walking down? It was insane for me.

Once we got inside and past security, we were given maps and told to download the Chateau de Versailles app, we were also given a cute kids version of the palace map for my daughter! The app is literally still on my phone because I’m now reading a biography on the Palace and I’ve been using it to view the rooms as they’re talked about through the book. I’ll link the book here, it was actually in the gift shop at the palace but I ordered it off Amazon so that I didn’t have to pack a book in my suitcase (carry-on only problems lol).

I won’t make this a post all about the history of the palace, you can follow this link here to their own page to learn all about it (trust me, I read everything I could before we even left for Europe lol).

Just know, this place is insane and absolutely beautiful and unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before. Walking the halls that the French monarchy walked down day in and day out was astonishing, knowing that Marie Antoinette lived here and fled from here prior to her beheading, was so crazy to me. It just felt so surreal being here and feeling like I was walking in their footsteps. My favorite part of the palace was actually visiting the Queen’s Hamlet- a small, rustic retreat in the park of the Château de Versailles built for Marie Antoinette in 1783. She had it built to escape court life as queen and was a place where she could be at leisure with her closest friends. It reminded me of a scene from Beauty and the Beast! Apparently during her time, it was frowned upon and French media made it seem like she had it built to make fun of the peasants in the streets, but to me- it just seemed like she wanted a place that was more simple and homey, something very different from the grandness of the palace and I can totally relate to that! Being in that palace was a whirlwind for me, I can’t imagine what it would be like being there as a young girl and Queen and having an entire court of people following and watching your every move. For all the beauty of the place, I do not for one second envy the lack of privacy the royal family had.

After getting our maps, we went to the cafe to get some breakfast- we opted for the quick service cafe, and grabbed some french donuts and some orange juice! Then we started our walk through the palace!

+ standing in the Cour de Marbre; the famous entrance courtyard built originally by King Louis III in 1623.

The palace hallways are filled with art, this is because King Louis XIV used it as a grand political tool to showcase absolute power, wealth, and the glory of France. He collected art and held massive parties to basically brag and showboat about how amazing his monarchy and the monarchy of France was.

After walking around, we decided we wanted to wander the gardens and I definitely knew I had to make it to the Queen’s Hamlet. We left the palace interior and started towards the gardens. The gardens are MASSIVE! You can rent golf carts to take around, but the line was INSANE and one of the people working the golf cart rentals, told us the wait for a golf cart was about an hour long. We skipped and decided to start walking down towards the fountains outside the palace.

+ The Latona Fountain (left), is the first fountain you see as you walk from the palace towards the gardens. What I find so fascinating about basically everything to do with the Palace of Versailles, is how every piece; fountain, furniture, painting, etc tells a story. This fountain was inspired by The Metamorphoses by Ovide. It illustrates the story of Latona, the mother of Apollo and Diana, protecting her children from the insults of the peasants of Lycia and pleading with Jupiter to avenge her. The god obliges by turning the inhabitants of Lycia into frogs and lizards. It’s so beautiful, it was not running while we were there but I can only imagine how this looked during a party at the palace in it’s heyday!

+ Apollo’s Fountain (right) is based on the legend of Apollo, the Sun god and the King’s icon. It features the god bursting forth from the water in anticipation of his daily flight above the earth. Tuby made this monumental group in the Gobelins manufacture: already in activity during the reign of Henry IV (1553-1610), Louis XIV made the Gobelins the Royal Upholstery Manufacture from 1667. between 1668 and 1670, when it was transported to Versailles and put in place and gilded the following year.

After walking around in awe, we got to a place where we saw that you could rent a canoe to take out on the water and decided to give it a go! The kids absolutely loved it!

We rented the canoe for 30 minutes and then walked to a cafe right outside the canal to get some gelato and waters! We sat in the grass and let the kids just run around for a little bit before deciding our next move. It was around 2 pm when we were having our little picnic.

After looking at the map and realizing just how far the Queen’s Hamlet was from where we were, and knowing that we didn’t have a stroller- side remark- DO NOT BRING A STROLLER TO THE PALACE! You cannot move around the palace with it and then everything outside is sand and not paved. I read this before we left which is what made us decide to skip the stroller altogether.

Across from the cafe we saw bike rentals! We decided to rent some bikes and then they also had little buggies to attach to the bikes for the kids. It was perfect! If you know my husband, his favorite thing in the world is riding bikes, so this just felt like too good to be true lol. We rode our bikes all the way to the Queen’s Hamlet!

To get to the Queen’s Hamlet, we parked our bikes at the front of the Petit Trianon- built in 1768 for King Louis XV, but then later given to Marie Antoinette as a gift from her husband King Louis XVI. In 1867, the Empress Eugénie, wife of Napoleon III, converted the Petit Trianon into a museum dedicated to the memory of Marie-Antoinette.

+ portrait on the far right is of Marie Antoinette and was painted in 1783 by the French artist Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun. It is perhaps the most famous painting in existence of Marie Antoinette and hangs here in her Petit Trianon.

After walking around the trianon, we walked through the garden past the Temple de l’Amour, towards the Queen’s Hamlet!

You can’t actually go inside any of the buildings because they are 18th century structures and very fragile and are preserved for conservation. But walking around them is absolutely stunning! We got some fresh squeezed orange juice from a snack cart while we walked around!

Afterwards, we walked back towards the Petit Trianon to get back on our bikes and head back to the main palace! We returned our bikes and then stopped for one more gelato from the cafe before walking back up towards the palace. It was close to 5:30 when we made it back; the palace closes at 6:30 pm. We walked to the gift shop, my daughter got some princess figurines and then I grabbed a postcard, and then we walked out of the palace (very sadly might I add lol) and walked towards the main street to get an uber!

Because it was still *very* early in Parisian time and not even close to being dark, we decided to add on another adventure- one that we skipped our very first day in Paris because I got sick. We took an uber to the Notre Dame Cathedral and were lucky enough to make it in the stand-by line! It is free to visit but you can reserve an entry time online to make sure you get in with ease. We walked through the lie and made it in, we lit a candle here as a family and said a prayer and then went to the gift shop area to buy some cross jewelry for my mom and my mother in law!

After, we grabbed another uber back to our hotel and then started to pack up our suitcases before heading to dinner. This was our last night in our cozy Paris apartment! We went back to Pizza Popolare because we loved it SO much, it was only fitting that that was our last meal in the heart of Paris! My daughter of course spent the entire dinner playing with her new figurines she bought at the Palace of Versailles.

It was an absolutely amazing last day in Paris, after dinner, we made it back to our hotel and made sure we had everything packed and ready to head to DISNEYLAND PARIS in the morning!