Today, I recap day three of my recent adults-only (for a change!) trip to France with my friend Shaina, which featured a day trip from Paris to Versailles. You can read our full itinerary here, but in the meantime please feel free to congratulate us for not smacking any pushy tourists at Versailles. 

When planning our day trip from Paris to Versailles, I had a lot of expectations for what we’d see: opulence, extravagance and excess in gorgeous room after gorgeous room of the fabulous Versailles Palace. What I did not expect was the following:

1. That we’d end up furtively eating about $12 worth of the famous Laduree macarons (each) as lunch in the corner of a Versailles courtyard mid-afternoon because of A Series of Unfortunate Food Events.
2. That I’d feel the almost uncontrollable urge to knock out not one but SEVERAL small women in perhaps their mid-60s.

“Almost” uncontrollable because I settled for planting my feet and refusing to move a couple times just to be an asshole instead of decking these women, which I think should be considered admirable restraint under the circumstances. Shaina, on the other hand, settled for whacking a probably unrelated person in 20s with her gigantic camera in what she stubbornly insists on calling “an accident.” Either way, you’d have to hope a message was sent to the crowd at large.

So, how did we get here? Let’s rewind, folks.

So, when planning our trip to Paris we knew it would be difficult to fit in everything we wanted to see in what amounted to two-and-a-half days. We also knew that we were determined to do a day trip to Versailles, even if it took half a day. Shaina had always wanted to see it, and my interest had recently been reignited by binge-watching two seasons of a show about Versailles on Netflix. (By the way, we didn’t see nearly as many men with gorgeous, shiny, flowing locks OR drunken fountain orgies OR poisonings as I’d been led to expect by this high-quality, educational program.)

The build-up to our day trip from Paris to Versailles: A visit to Montemartre. 

Saturday started auspiciously enough — since the Trianon properties (grande and petite) we also intended to visit at Versailles weren’t open until the afternoon, we’d opted to leave Versailles until a little later in the day. Thus, we started out day with a visit to another of my favorite places in Paris: Montemartre.

This trendy neighborhood, which is perched upon a hill in Paris’s 18th Arrondissement, has traditionally been home to artists. It is also the location of the magnificent Basilica Sacre Couer, which is newer than many of Paris’s other famous churches but every bit as gorgeous. I talked a little about this area in a post from last year here.

(Psssst. You can find more Montmartre off the the beaten path from a fellow blogger here!)

We had a lovely breakfast, visited Sacre Coeur and had a nice morning walking around the arts market right next to the church. Perfect beginning to the day.

Things got a little messier after that.

So, we got a little confused by signage as to what train we should get on, which led to us panic-jumping onto a train and then asking the people around us if it was the right one. At least one dude thought it was, but wasn’t nearly as convicted about it as he could have been. Fortunately, it turned out we were indeed on the correct one (albeit stopping at Versailles-Chantiers, rather than Versailles Rive-Gauche as we would have preferred). And so we figured our train issues were done for the day.

Nope. Things went smoothly for the first few stops, until we came to a station and stopped moving. I’d like to mention that I’ve almost never found not speaking French well to be a problem in Paris because practically everyone knows English, but on this particular occasion the announcement of what was going on was exclusively in French.

Eventually, we learned that a backpack had been abandoned on the tracks (or bridge?) ahead of us and that we’d be stopped until the police investigated. Right about the time we learned this, we realized we could hear an awful lot of police sirens outside. Lovely. We spent a solid 30 minutes sitting there trying to figure out the French version of Uber (LeCab) since I couldn’t remember my damned Uber password, figuring we needed a backup plan if the train never started moving again. Mercifully, by the time we were thoroughly disgusted with our inability to get the app to work, the train started moving again at last.

We’d originally decided that we wanted to get lunch in the town before visiting Versailles. After our delays getting on the train to Versailles and then again while riding the train, we’d realize that we no longer had time for a sit-down lunch as planned and decided to grab a sandwich along the way. Which led to problem two: almost everything was closed midafteroon. The couple shops that appeared to be open didn’t look great, but we figured we’d keep walking and find something. When that didn’t pan out, we again weren’t too worried — every museum has a little cafe. We’d just stop in the one at Versailles, we reasoned.

Day trip to Versailles: visiting the palace

Visiting in the low/shoulder season meant that it was pretty chilly in Paris during our visit, but also meant that we waited in very few lines at attractions during the trip. It never even occurred to me that our day trip to Versailles would be different.

I don’t even need to say that this was a mistake at this point, do I?

Anyway, there was of course an epic line of people. Fortunately, despite its terrifying looks it didn’t take too much more than 20 minutes to get in (at least according to Shaina, whose memory is better than mine and whose guess is undoubtedly more accurate than the 200 minutes I’d estimated. I’m not always super reasonable when I’m hungry).

First order of business when we finally got in (other than to decide to blow off the audio guide because we couldn’t stand the idea of waiting even longer) was to ask someone where we might find a place to buy a sandwich. To our surprise, we were told the only place to eat was an actual restaurant on the property and that — imagine a look of disdain here — we couldn’t eat a sandwich (or anything) INSIDE the palace.

This is the type of moment, by the way, where someone who recognized what we were after might mention “but there’s tons of places to grab a sandwich just outside in the palace gardens.” This particular Versailles employee just wasn’t all that invested, however.

Salvation came in just a moment later when we realized there was indeed one place to buy food in our immediate vicinity. And that place actually was somewhere we’d intended to visit in the city — what luck! The famous macaron company Laduree, however, pretty much only sold macarons at this Versailles mini-location.

From here I assume you can fill in the blanks as to how we ended up huddled in a corner of the courtyard cramming expensive macarons into our mouths before we got busted. They were delicious though, and I assume that isn’t just the desperation talking.

Day trip from Paris to Versailles: inside the palace

Possibly it was a good thing that we got all jacked up on sugar, because our next step was actually entering the palace and HOLY COW.

It was a jungle in there.

To start, there were just about a million people in the place. Consequently, everywhere you went you did as part of a sea of people, with not a whole hell of a lot of control over pace. Regardless of everything else, that would have been annoying.

But then there were these older ladies. I don’t know if they were there as a tour group or if a bunch of similarly rude people just happened to congregate at the same place at the same time, but these women were literally shoving us. Not even so much to get around us so much as to push us forward. And for the record, we were going at the same pace as literally everyone else.

You know those people that, when stopped in traffic, immediately start honking constantly as if that will somehow make a space for you to go magically appear? Now imagine if that person in the car also decides to start running into the back of your car while beeping. That was these women.

So yeah, I can’t say we really enjoyed the inside of Versailles because we were busy attempting to neither have anxiety attacks nor cause an international incident by knocking someone the fuck out.

Getting pictures was also difficult because of the crowd, but what we did see *was* impressive. Without the crowd, I’m sure it would have been fascinating. But as I’m the kind of person who likes to read the signs and know what the hell I’m looking at, the school-of-fish-style procession through Versailles wasn’t the best.

What we could see of the Hall of Mirrors was pretty neat, and the crowd mercifully was slightly less squeezed together in there.

Once we escaped the palace itself– sorry, it is hard to describe it as anything other than escaping — we were rewarded, however. The gardens at Versailles were hands-down the best part of the entire visit. We spent a lot of time wandering around the gardens, which I imagine must be absolutely spectacular while in bloom.

We also happened to find approximately a million places in which to buy food while we wandered the gardens, because OF COURSE.

Day trip from Paris to Versailles: final conclusions

We stayed until closing, then took the train from the Versailles Rive Gauche station back to Paris. I will say that when the way isn’t obstructed by abandoned bags on the track, it is a quick and easy trip between Paris and Versailles. Always a plus for a day trip. That said, Versailles wouldn’t be my first recommendation for a day trip from Paris purely because it was so busy there — even in March. Moreover, while it is impressive on the inside I personally much preferred the other French castles we we saw on our last trip, detailed here and here. Of course, none of those are quite as easy a day trip as Paris to Versailles is. Still worth it though!

The rest of the story: the Latin Quarter and Champs d’Elysee

Once we got back to Paris, we headed for the Latin Quarter to look for dinner and the Champs d’Elysee to close out our trip. One nice thing about traveling with adults is that you have more of an opportunity to take in the city at night. And Paris at night? Absolutely spectacular.

Day trip from Paris to Versailles. 

PSSST. Enjoyed this post? Let’s stay in touch! Please consider following Babies with Backpacks at our Facebook page, Twitter or Instagram. And remember, sharing is caring!