I had a dream I was gliding through a beautiful wilderness on a big light blue bicycle with my guy and a bunch of strangers. And we stopped in a lush grassy field for a summer picnic at the water’s edge. There was a palace in the background and fountains everywhere…
Oh wait! That was real!
Our Versailles daydream!
On the way to the Metro station where our tour began, I found an Ememem Flacking project! I have been following this artist on Instagram forever. I love the way they make sidewalk cracks and imperfections into something beautiful!
I loved that our tour of Versailles was on bikes, and that we would see all the gardens that we had missed on our first trip to the palace in 2021. And I also loved that the tour began in Paris with a guide taking the group to Versailles on the Metro. Such a perfect way to organize the tour! We booked this tour through Get Your Guide, as Michael gets a corporate discount… but the tour operator is BLUE FOX TRAVEL. Here’s the tour on Get Your Guide. This was one of the best planned tours I think we’ve ever been on. I loved it all!
One of the first things we learned on this tour is that taking the Metro to Versailles is extremely easy. The line ends in Versailles, so you can’t go wrong. Get to the end, get off the train.
This was one of our planned tours that I was majorly looking forward to. I was dying to ride a bike through all that beauty. And it definitely did not disappoint! But first things first. Our tour guide took us through a food market and all of the tourists assembled their own picnic supply before we reached our bikes.
There was an indoor market…and an outdoor market…We were even taken to a boulangerie/patisserie for pre-made sandwiches and baked goods!We were all set for an epic picnic on the grounds of the Palace of Versailles!It was time to pick up our bikes!Trying one out for size…I got the saddlebags! The tour thought of everything!
It was just a short five or ten minute bike ride from where we picked up the bikes to the gardens entrance. I just love riding bikes. Not since we rode bikes through a small town in Nepal in 2018 have we had so much fun on bikes!
This was just inside the gates of the garden property…but far from the actual palace.The ride through the tree-lined boulevards was SO idyllic!We stopped by the ‘lake’ for a little break and photos. The guide was kind enough to take photos for those who wanted them…We definitely wanted to capture these moments!We stopped at the most picturesque location for a picnic. Right at the very end of the long ‘lake’. We all took our picnic treasures from our saddlebags and sought out our little squares of paradise in the grass. It was a beautiful September day…perfect for a picnic!We may have overdone it at the markets, but everything just looked SO good! We had sandwiches, cheeses, pastries, oh my!Yum…Happiness is…An unexpected guest…The pain au chocolat in France is an art form…an incredibly delectable art form.
Picnic over, ready to explore the village that Marie Antoinette had created for her bizarre indulgences…
Not gonna lie, what Marie Antoinette did at Versailles was creepy af. She created a fake little village for herself and had people wear the costumes of villagers so that she could walk among the little people. I know there’s context and she had a pushmepullya desire and repugnance with her station…but there’s a line. She crossed it. We wouldn’t cut off her head today, but she would be so cancelled she would essentially cease to exist…I would hope.
She built a village. So she could play being a part of village life. This was Disneyland before Disneyland existed…but there was only one person attending this amusement park.
Miss Marie.Miss Marie’s awkward bizarre little playland…Le Temple de l’Amour by Richard Mique…1777-1778.Imagine dressing up and playing make-believe farmer for your queen so she could walk by and see you pretend toiling!Some of the buildings were so pretty! Can’t believe they’re still standing after all these years.Look at that staircase!This is the only building that was open to the public. There was a public washroom on the ground floor. The top floor, where the windows are behind me, was just empty. They weren’t real houses…just made to look like real houses. They didn’t bother to finish them off inside. They were facades only…Did it ever work? I doubt it…The view from those windows. It all looks so real, doesn’t it. I found this little oasis a lot more than a little disturbing. But it was also fascinating. How much did this lonely lady want to escape her life. In the end, I suppose she did…though not in the prettiest of ways.
The Blue Fox tour actually ended at the gates of the Palace. It was up to us whether or not we wanted to go inside. We were both of two minds. It’s a zoo in there…but we were there. What the heck. The tour covered the ticket to go inside. You don’t find yourself at the gates of Versailles every day.
In 2021, we thought the palace was crowded. Boy, were we wrong! Once we got inside this time, we were swept up into a sea of humanity that we could NOT escape. It was terrible! 0/10 I hated it!
The imposing facade of the palace…It’s beauty everywhere you look, don’t get me wrong. It’s just one of the most crowded places I’ve ever been.
At one point, when we were trapped inside the meat-river of the flow inside the palace, I literally ran to a window and looked outside to feel a little relief.
The pretty gardens outside the palace, as seen from Hell…It’s absolutely beautiful inside the palace and I’m not saying you shouldn’t go. I’m just saying we had already seen it and we didn’t need to feel the claustrophobic craziness we experienced this time around…I took very little photos during our walk-through, because I just wanted to get out. The thing is, you can’t…the only way out is THROUGH. Most of the photos I did take were of ceilings, to avoid people. You can just see the heads of people in this shot. The flow of humanity through the Hall of Mirrors…
At one point we were all shoulder to shoulder like sardines. It became unbearable. It was SO very hot and there seemed to be no end to the ride.
But we escaped. We got to the end, we saw daylight again, we walked to the train station and got the hell out of Dodge. With a quick stop at the normalcy of McDonald’s to sooth the wild beasts that we had become when trapped inside the glittery gold palace.
This ends one of the best days of our trip… with one of the most chaotic endings…
KEVIN CRAIG 