The truth about visiting Versailles

Versailles has been known by its golden gates, lavishing gardens and famous occupants throughout the years, such as Marie-Antoinette, is currently one of the most visited palaces in the world. Many people, whilst in Paris, decide to take a day to visit the beautiful versailles and see with their own eyes what the French Prince and Princess lived like.

Amongst these tourists, were my sister and I. We also had the brilliant idea of going to see Versailles during our Paris-getaway. I had been in Paris before, but not in Versailles and it was my sister’s first time too so we were very excited about this mini-trip.

We woke up, made our way to the train station, found the correct information about the trains which was easier than expected, got some baguettes to take with us and hopped on board the train to Versailles. Arriving in Versailles, we had our first ‘red flag’ about this whole idea: it was so crowded at the train station, we had to squeeze our way out! We could not help but to think about waiting in line to buy our tickets to go back to Paris, but decided to forget about it for the moment and enjoy the day.

Now before I continue, I have to explain one thing: On the official Versailles website, it said that EU citizens under 26 years old can enter free of charge and are supposed to use a certain entrance. Entrance B. It also said that to avoid queues to buy tickets, you could buy ‘skip-the-queue’ tickets online, and go directly to Entrance B if you are not under 26 from the EU. So naturally, we assumed that everyone else would have to go to ‘Entrance A’.

Ok, let’s continue! So we followed the crowds of tourists to the Palace and before we reached the outside gates, there was a HUGE queue. So long you would think Marie Antoinette herself was there distributing free shoes to everyone. We decided to ask because we didn’t see separate entrances and we were told that it was a queue for the metal detectors, security etc. The entrance queue was after you passed it so we waited.

When we finally made our way to the patio (before the actual entrance to Versailles), there were 2 queues: one with about 20 people to our left and another with about 1000 (probably more) to our right. We thought to ourselves ‘ Hey, we have skip-the-queue tickets so we are super lucky we don’t have to wait on the right queue’ and walked to the left to ask someone and make sure we were in the right place.

FUNNY THING THOUGH: the 20-people queue was the one for the ticket office and the huge one was the ‘skip-the-line’ queue. Turns out that everyone that goes to Versailles has the same idea to buy tickets in advance. By then I already wanted to go back to Paris and I forget all about Versailles but my sister had her ticket and it was non-refundable (otherwise I believe 70% of the people would try to get their money back when they got there and saw the queue) so we decided to wait.

Let’s just say it was the 2 and something longest hours of my life. The queue would move very slowly and we could barely see the entrance with all the turns. If you played the snake game on your old nokia mobile, until the snake got super big that it made lots of Z’s… that it what the queue looked like. But not only the queue was long, it was freezing cold in there. I guess that because Versailles is not surrounded by buildings like Paris’ city centre, it gets colder there. Anyway, standing there in such and cold and windy winter day, when the sun was actually beginning to shine in Paris was just sad. Barely feeling my fingers and toes while wearing gloves and 2 socks was worse. Eventually I went to get a soup in the also overcrowded little coffee-shop they had there and it helped a lot.

When we finally made inside, it felt like Christmas morning! We started walking through the rooms, looking at the paintings, art, architecture and all the gold on the walls, chandeliers and etc. They were really show-offy back in the day! But it was difficult to move inside or sometimes almost impossible to even get a picture of a painting or walk through certain rooms because there were so many people inside. Many people who just looked bored while looking around and not really being interested in what they were seeing (I guess that is to expect in every famous touristic place). Anyway, overall the inside of the palace is definitely worth seeing if you are a big history/art fan but otherwise, not really worth the wait.

After that, we decided to visit the gardens and to our surprise, you can actually go to the gardens without a ticket. There is a part of the gardens that is closed for a tour but the rest is open for anyone, and even if you don’t have a ticket to Versailles you can just walk around there after going through the security check! Later I found out that the gardens of Versailles were what my sister really wanted to see but let’s not dwell on that.

Unfortunately for us, during winter, it is not as beautiful as we would expect by checking pictures on google images. It was very muddy because of all the rain, no flowers and everything looked dark. I have no doubt though that during spring, it will be breathtaking.

Overall Versailles was a bit disappointing because of all of these issues… the tricky ‘skip the line’ ticket, the wait under rain and freezing weather, barely being able to enjoy the inside of the palace because it was so crowded and visiting the gardens out of season. However, if in the ‘lower season’, a.k.a. winter, it was like that, I cannot begin to imagine what it would be like during Spring or Summer. While I’m glad I went there and actually saw the inside of the palace, I don’t think I will be going back there in the future.

I hope you enjoyed this post :) If you had an experience similar to mine or any questions about this ‘journey’, let me know!