My sister-in-law has been visiting this week, which provided the perfect excuse to go to Versailles on Thursday (a public holiday here in France, to celebrate the
Ascension of Jesus - link goes to Wikipedia, in case you, too, were wondering what on earth the Ascension of Jesus was...).
We went out to Versailles, fully intending to look round the Palace. As did about eleventy-three billion other people. Unlike them, we didn't waste our day standing in a queue in the blazing sunshine, but decided to go straight to the gardens and have a look round. On weekends and public holidays in the summer (at least, this year), you have to pay to see the gardens, because they play music and the fountains dance to the music, so says the slightly misleading blurb. Charge was €8 per adult, with reductions for children, students, unemployed people, etc. (It appears they forgot to tell the tour companies they'd changed the policy this year, though - some very unhappy tour guides at the gates trying to buy tickets!)
There is one fountain that runs all day, which does indeed dance to the music and it's delightful. The other fountains are turned off for parts of the day, to save water. For the benefit of the reader who might be intending to visit, the big fountains run from 11:00 to 12:00 in the morning, with some of the smaller fountains running from 11:15 to 11:454, and then in the afternoon they all run from 15:30 to 18:00 in the afternoon, with the exception of the giant fountain to the right of the park, which only runs from 17:20-17:30.
This is important to know, so that you don't turn up at 12:00, needing to leave by 16:00. (Guess who did that?) On the other hand, if you were to have time constraints like us, it's not wasted money - the gardens are beautiful, and the fountains are gorgeous as works of art, even without the water running. We spent the whole day wandering around in the sunshine, looking at the various styles of garden (and judging them and their creators harshly, of course - some of them frankly were just not up to scratch ;-) ) and the amount of work that had gone into designing them, and clearly still went into maintaining them. Plus there was icecream.
Practical details before the photos, for those who find this page by googling "How do I get to Versaille from Paris" and the like:
Versailles is about 45 minutes outside of Paris, and you get there by getting an RER C train out to Versailles Rive Gauche. It is probably worth getting a return ticket (aller-retour), to avoid hvaing to queue at the other end to use one of the two un-broken ticket machines. (We didn't. We should have.) It costs €3.05 each way, per person. We got on the RER C at Invalides, but you can also get it from Champs de Mars, where the Eiffel Tower is, or Notre Dame, where the cathedral is. It is basically the most tourist-focused train line I've ever seen, but in a good way. (Apart from the accordion players who target it mercilessly. Please, please don't give them money. It only encourages them, and they shouldn't be there - the RATP do run auditions and give busking licences to proper musicians, to play in the metro and RER system - the guys on trains don't have them. They're just begging, and while you only have to see them once in your trip and so may think they're quaint and cute, those of us who live here have to put up with them all. the. time. Not so cute. And they vary wildly in talent. *shudder* Oh, do they vary.)
Once you get to Versailles-Rive Gauche (Versailles-Rive Droite is where the actual town of Versailles is, from memory - it's been a while since I was there, but it seemed a pleasant enough place to go, with slightly less tourists), you will have no trouble working out where to go, because there will be a million other people going in the same direction. In case, by some miracle, there aren't, come out of the station, cross the road, and turn right up the street. At the end of that block, look left. You should see a giant golden palace with some huge rusted steel curved pillars in front of it, hard to miss.
There are various people along the way advertising tickets for sale - these are ticket agencies, and it is up to you as to whether you join a queue there to buy a ticket from them, or join a queue at the Palace and buy a ticket there. The agencies cost more, but will presumably offer you some added benefits like a guided tour and the like. You will, in either event, have to queue to get in the Palace anyway (which is where we decided to abandon the going-inside part of the plan, having seen the size of the queue) - one slightly frazzled looking English-speaking woman standing in a very, very long queue said hopefully "it's moving quite quickly!" - I can only think she hadn't seen how far she had left to go... I hope she liked it once she got in!
Having decided that we weren't keen on spending the next couple of hours in a queue in the midday sun, we went straight to the gardens. Your normal Chateau de Versailles ticket will not get you into the gardens on weekends or public holidays - you will have to buy a separate ticket, or make sure you specify when you buy your palace tickets that you want one for the gardens too. It will cost an additional €8. Keep your ticket, because if you wander out of the palace grounds (say, down to the big lake at the bottom of the gardens, for a picnic lunch - I recommend this) you will need it to get back in.
And that's enough babbling from me, I think - pretty pictures follow, some with water, some without.
