Some of you may know it as a must-see travel destination, while others like that one palace that Kim and Kanye hosted their pre-wedding party. If you don’t know anything about it, then let me introduce it to you in a simple way. The Palace of Versailles also known as Château de Versailles was an enormous home where many lines of French Royalty resided for many years. So yes it’s located in France! When it was first built it was pretty much a normal sized mansion, but now Versailles consists of 17 acres of land. This includes the Palace, and lot’s of beautiful gardens, including tons of posh fountains. Now a day’s Versailles is open as a museum and has become one of the most famous tourist attractions.
When I was considering which places I wanted to visit during my four day stay in Paris, I obviously kept Versailles in mind. Of course, me being the most indecisive person couldn’t make up my on mind on whether or not it was worth going. I had heard that tickets were quite pricey and it was a bit of a mission to get there. What did I do? I decided to ask different people that have visited before. I asked my friend’s mom what her thoughts were on it and she said this, “Honestly it’s pretty far from the city, and you are pretty much just walking through the hallways of yet another royal palace. It’s not worth it!” To be honest, I was quite surprised by her words, but I needed a second opinion.
On a different occasion, I met up with Gretta (I mentioned her on my previous post) and told to her what my friend’s mom had said about the palace. She literally made the most disgusted face I had ever seen. She could not believe someone had spoken so negatively about a place like Versailles. My cousin when on a rant and this is what I can remember from it, “Versailles is one of the most beautiful places I have EVER seen so you HAVE to go. You can’t travel to Paris and leave without visiting Versailles, it would be a joke.” Okay maybe I added the joke part, but she might as well have said it. I then had two completely different opinions on my hands and now it was all up to me.
Weeks went by and I still couldn’t make up my mind! So what convinced me? Aside from really considering Gretta’s advice, I gave myself time to really think about it and came to this conclusion. If Kimye decided to throw a lavish party there for their wedding and even had Lana Del Rey sing, this palace must be LEGIT! So with that, Emily and I last minute decided to buy tickets online and see it for ourselves, besides supposedly there was going to be this amazing night fountain show! YAYYY!
Fast forward to my fourth day in Paris.
Emily and I had just gone to the Eiffel Tower to take pictures and started walking towards the metro to head to Versailles, except I made a quick stop at the Pharmacy. On my way out I saw a girl walking around with a map and realized it was my friend Lupita! I stopped her and we laughed our asses off, I mean how funny is it that Paris is a huge city yet I still randomly bumped into one of the ten girls that came to Paris with us. And it wasn’t just anyone either, Lupita became one of my closest friends throughout the trip, I was thrilled! After getting all our laughs out we talked and I persuaded her to come with us to Versailles. At first, she wasn’t convinced, but I told her that the fountain shows would totally be worth it! Next thing you know she’s buying her ticket and on we went to catch the train.
Let’s talk about first impressions. This place is extremely big and definitely recognizable since the palace’s main entrance is an unmistakable bright gold gate. In other words, it’s beautiful. Although I didn’t get a picture of the gate since a lot of people were blocking it, I did get a few pictures of the Palace once I was on the other side. I could not believe that I was actually there so of course, it was time for a mini photoshoot!
Unfortunately, there was an impressive amount of line to even get in (not surprising) so listen up, GET THERE EARLY! We decided to go last minute so it was kind of our faults. Because of this mistake, we not only missed the one garden show that was free, but we also didn’t even make it to the gardens at all, since they happened to close early that day. I WAS DEVASTATED! Apparently, the night garden shows that we believed were included in our already expensive ticket were sold separately. I mean I can’t tell you if it’s worth it to see them, but they looked pretty dang cool on the videos they have on their website. Although we were bummed about the gardens, we still had a good time seeing the palace and the AMAZING chandelier hallway. Seriously you feel like you’re in a fantasy movie set!
THE GARDENS.
The view from inside the Palace.
I had already imagined myself posing by the fancy fountains and the rose bushes. Heck, I already knew how I was going to shoot my friends so I could practice my photography. So obviously I really wanted to take pictures by the garden except they wouldn’t let anyone in, not even for a second. What did we do? We pretended to make the line for the night garden show tickets and then sneaked out and stood by one of the fences that had a decent view of the garden’s side. Have in mind that this is only a tiny section out of all gardens Versailles has. It literally looked like a giant maze from the palace’s window. lol. They told us to move after a couple of shots, but at least we got our pictures!
If there’s anything you can take from this post is the following: you can listen to people’s opinions of where and what to see when traveling, but at the end of the day it’s what you make it! You can go to the coolest place and have a terrible time, IT ALL DEPENDS ON YOUR ATTITUDE. Travel and see places with an open mind, a positive outlook and everything you do will turn into an adventure. I’ll end this post with a quote that adds to the point of my Versailles story, seriously make this your motto when it comes to traveling and seeing new places in general.
Better to see something once than to hear about it a thousand times.
xoxo Pao Fog