Our second day in Paris was the first of how the rest of the trip would go: full of rain. Versailles was on our list of places to see and we opted to visit there on Wednesday rather than Tuesday. Tuesdays at Versailles include a musical water show in the gardens which sounded super cool! But I’d also heard that Versailles is extremely crowded, even more so on Tuesdays. So we decided to skip the music and go on another day instead. I think that was a good move because even on Wednesday it was packed. I mean, literally moving like a school of fish throughout the palace without any hope of speeding up at your own pace.
Versailles is about a 40 minute train ride outside of Paris. At the bottom I provide a file to a map of the train route to get there. You have to buy a special train ticket to head to Versailles. From the train station it’s about a 15 minute walk (turn right out the station and just walk until you see a giant palace in the distance on your left hand side. Turn there). The palace opens at 9:00am so we planned to be there right at 9:00. Well due to our lack of sleep for the past 3 nights, I did not feel well at all that morning and we were slow going getting there as I needed to sit and rest to prevent getting sick ( I don’t do well with continual nights of getting up at strange hours and then only sleeping 5 hours on top of that). Thankfully Pablo is very patient with me and we made it to the gates with him carrying BOTH our backpacks right at 9:00am.
Even with arriving RIGHT at 9:00, we still waited in line, in the cold, cold rain for an hour. I’d advise getting there sooner if you can, but definitely come early. Within 30 minutes the line was over twice as long as it had been when we arrived. Some people were waiting multiple hours to get in! You can buy your tickets online ahead of time which saves a little time in that you don’t need to go to the ticket counter. But after that it’s just first come first serve. Eventually we made it in and were thankful they have an attendant who checks bags for you and held on to our big backpacks.
We probably spent a couple of hours going through the palace and it was pretty cool! The ornate details were spectacular, but it was also incredible to see so much wealth in one place when history tells us the country was starving and in poverty. The Hall of Mirrors was my favorite.
Eat lunch early! That would be my other piece of advice to visitors. There is a full restaurant (pricy so we skipped it) and a cafe available as well. We had planned to buy food from a grocery store for lunch but 1) couldn’t find hardly any grocery stores and 2) found out they close very early and don’t open in the morning until late. So we had run out of time to get food and decided to hit the cafe. I’m glad we went when we did because we found a table to sat at without any problem. But when we went back later to use the restroom before leaving, the place was packed. People were sitting on the floor everywhere eating their lunch because there just wasn’t enough space. However, that does bring another good point of advice: There are constant crowds at Versailles and limited restrooms. We waited to use the main ones for a little bit but the extremely long line was not moving at all. We remembered seeing a bathroom down the hallway past the cafe so headed back there to use that instead and there was no line at all. Score!
The gardens were the thing I was most excited to see at Versailles. But given the rain, we didn’t stay long. We were freezing from being outside in the cold and wet for an hour already anyway so we looked around the gardens a bit (and they did not disappoint!) but we cut the time short. We probably headed out around 1:00 or 2:00pm to catch a train back to Paris. Our next train to Bruges was leaving that evening around 6:00pm so it still gave us a few more hours to kill. We stopped at Gare du Nord to shed our backpacks at a locker for a few hours and then decided to head to Sacre Couer. Lockers are another piece I highly recommend using when backpacking Europe. It quickly gets exhausting hauling them around while sightseeing so we always left them in lockers at the train stations. Some are much more expensive than others (Paris for instance was quite pricy while Fuessen in Germany was not) but typically they’ll hold it for 24 hours. We found it was definitely worth the cost.
Sacre Couer was cool, but I have to admit not as exciting after Notre Dame. I think there’s a funicular that will take you up, but we took the steps and it really was not that bad. It was a little tricky to find it from the train station, but we found signs and made our way up eventually. Entering Sacre Couer is free but if you want to go up in the dome or the crypts, you have to pay- which we opted not to do. Again, just not as stunning as Notre Dame.
In the streets around the base of Sacre Couer there were plenty of food options so we grabbed some dinner there too.We had arrived amidst a turrential downpour so finally gave in and bought an umbrella from a street vendor for 5 Euros. 1 minute later the rain completely stopped. I was not happy that we had just wasted money on it for no reason, but it actually gave us a lot of use over the next few weeks so in the end it was very worth it. Lesson learned: even if traveling in August, pack an umbrella!
Sacre Couer doesn’t look like it’s too far away from the train station, in fact I looked it up ahead of time and it said it was only 20 minutes. But we wandered around trying to figure out the streets for a while yet again with no luck. With the rain on top of that, we took the metro. Maybe if we go back again for an extended period of time I may try the biking or walking, but Paris was tough! I think one more day there would’ve been perfect, but we had our train to catch that evening to take us on to our next stop: Bruges, about 2 1/2 hours away.
Paris RER C Line Map: Map of train line to get to Versailles.
Fire Round the World 