Paris, France - Day 3

Sunday, April 14, 2024

Today was our last day in Europe — hard to believe it! We decided to spend the day at the Palace of Versailles, which is about 18 km from the city of Paris. Versailles is the former royal residence throughout the 16th and 17th century until the French Revolution swept the royal family out of Versailles forever. It was abandoned during the French Revolution, and is now managed by the French Ministry of Culture. Tory read a book about Marie Antoinette, the wife of Louis XVI, so she was particularly interested in visiting the famous palace grounds.

Luckily, Aden was feeling much better this morning. It’s amazing how quickly Amoxicillin works; I’m so glad we took him into the doctor yesterday.

Around 9:00am, the four of us walked to the Metro station near our airbnb apartment to catch the commuter train to Versailles. It felt like we were walking in circles trying to find the entrance to the Metro, and eventually found the train station in the basement of a shopping centre.

Andi bought four Metro tickets to get us to & from Versailles today. Now, it was just a matter of figuring out which color and number of train. It took us a bit, but eventually we figured it out. Just another day of confusing European train travel!

Once we reached the Notre Dame station, we needed to catch a different train to Versailles. There are two types of trains in Paris, we learned — the metro which takes passengers around the city, and the RER that extends further into the Paris suburbs. We needed to be on the RER C train to get to Versailles.

Eventually, we made it there, arriving at Versailles around 11:00am. Our first stop was to Starbucks across the street from the station to use the restroom and get coffees.

Next, we walked to a small grocery store to pick up food for a picnic lunch today. We walked along the quaint sidewalks of the town which were fairly quiet on a Sunday morning. The grocery store had lots to choose — we purchased a baguette and some crackers, deli meat and cheese, beef sticks, Nutella spread, grapes, a chocolate bar, and a couple waters.

Then, the four of us walked to the entrance of Versailles which had a large crowd gathered at the gates. Andi and I decided not to purchase tickets for the inside the museum; we just wanted to spend the day outside on the grounds. Previously, I’d read that admission to the Versailles Park was free, but later figured out that this is only during the low season. During the months of April - October, tickets are €20/each and an additional €7/each on Musical Fountain Days (which apparently today was).

Nevertheless, we were here. We paid the money and entered the palace grounds. Versailles really is a beautiful place, and even more enjoyable on a gorgeous weather day such as this one. Temperatures were in the mid-70’s by Noon with the sun shining and not a bit of humidity in the air. We really couldn’t have picked a more perfect day to visit.

“Well, what should we do?” we asked one another. We decided to ditch the map and started wandering through the maze of manicured gardens, sculptures, and fountains.

“Can you believe you’re here, Tory?” we kept asking her. Tory seemed to really be taking in all the grandeur around her.

At the top of the hour, we heard classical music start playing through the loud speakers and all the fountains suddenly started spewing water. Musical Fountain Day! Ah, this is what we paid €108 to see!

Versailles was even prettier with all the fountains running. It did make our visit here more special. The fountains and music ran for about 10 minutes, and then shut off again.

Eventually, we made our way to the Grand Canal which has several grassy areas perfect for a picnic. This was such an idyllic scene with hundreds of visitors sprawled out on the grass, riding bicycles nearby, or taking a romantic rowboat ride through the Grand Canal.

We set up our little picnic in the grass, and ate while we people-watched all the action around us. What a gorgeous day this was! After we ate, all four of us laid in the grass to soak up the sunshine. Aden and Tory fed the hungry carp scraps of bread from our picnic.

The music and fountains went off once again at 1:00pm, and it was fun to see the show from a different perspective down by the canal. The four of us continued walking through the maze of palace gardens until we eventually made our way back to the main palace entrance.

As we exited Versailles through the main courtyard, we saw a young family with a very upset child. It appeared that the little girl had fallen and had a bloody knee. The mother was trying to console her as the crowd was turning to look to see what all the crying and commotion was about. Luckily, Andi always carries a small medical kit with us, so I ran over to the woman and handed her a bandaid. With kids, sometimes all it takes is a bandaid to make things feel better! The woman declined at first, but I offered a second time. She graciously accepted, and it seemed to help. I’m glad. Nothing worse than having a lovely family outing ruined by a scraped-up knee.

From Versailles, Andi, Tory, Aden, and I walked to get ice cream. We found a place called Sweet Josie’s, and ordered scoops of gelato.

While we enjoyed our treats perched on the curbside, we watched someone parallel park their car. It was seriously impressive! Driving in Europe is next-level.

What a nice time we enjoyed at Versailles. The four of us walked back to the train station to catch the metro back to our airbnb apartment in the 3rd arrondissement. Except, for some reason, our round-trip metro tickets wouldn’t work at the turn-styles. Hmm?

We were racing against time as the next train was departing the station in 10 minutes and the next one wouldn’t be leaving for another 40 minutes. Andi asked a woman working at the station, and she explained to us that there are two kinds of metro tickets in Paris — one that take you on the metro within the city limits, and the RER one that takes you within the metro and to the outlying suburbs. Apparently, we’d purchased the wrong kind because, who knew?

The woman was so friendly, and opened the turn-style for us to go through. “Now you know for next time,” she said with a smile.

The four of us found some seats together on the train, and collapsed into them. A day of adventuring is fun, but exhausting. The train ride took about an hour to return to our neighborhood, with one connection stop at the Notre Dame station.

None of us felt like going out again for dinner, so Andi surprised us with take-out dinner from our favorite falafel place in Paris. He and I ate there when we visited Paris in 2012. A guy on a bicycle delivered the food right to our door.

And with that, our European adventure has come to an end. What a trip it has been — from sicknesses to castles and history to cruising the Mediterranean. We spent the rest of the evening packing our bags and preparing for the long flight back to Minneapolis.

Monday, April 15, 2024

Early Monday morning, the private driver Andi hired arrived to take us to the airport. It was a fairly smooth and uneventful flight back to the United States.

Until next time!