Week of March 14th 2011: The Grand Trianon and Marie Antoinette's Estate (Versailles, France)

Although I had been to Versailles before, I hadn't wandered too far from the Palace and the main gardens. While the Palace is extremely beautiful, I wasn't too excited to go back. It tends to be very crowded and seeing extravagant room after extravagant room gets very tiring. However, Kevin had never been and I knew it was a must see for a trip to Paris.

Since I am a notorious over planner, I spent the week before my trip trying to figure out what I wanted to see. While talking about my plans and the day trip to Versailles with friends and co-workers, I started hearing the same thing over and over again - check out the rest of the gardens and Marie Antoinette's estate.

After a couple of days in Paris, Kevin and I (joined also by Lindsay), went on our day trip to Versailles. I was lucky that they felt similarly to me about the Palace. While it is incredible to see, it's very hard to spend a lot of time in and soon we were on a lovely stroll through the gardens to the Petite Trianon, Marie Antoinette's home away from the Palace.

I had been mostly looking forward to seeing Marie Antoinette’s Hamlet which is located in the gardens behind the Petite Trianon. The Hamlet looks like something that fell out of a Disney movie… in fact, I’m pretty certain that Belle’s house was designed after one of them. Lindsay and I had a blast looking at all of the little structures and picking which one each of us would live in. I loved the one with the balcony and spiral staircase. Lindsay made a wonderful tour guide too. She explained that each of the buildings had a different purpose and acted as a different room in a house so there was a kitchen, coop, bedroom, etc.

We continued our walk around the gardens (and by that I mean we got terribly lost… like, got to the end of the estate and had to back track) until we got back to the Petite Trianon. We decided to walk through it and I really enjoyed the relative (relative to the Palace) modesty of it. However, like the rest of Versailles, there was still quite a bit of extravagance. I was pretty entertained by the over sized billiards table we came across. We all tried to figure out how people a foot shorter than us would be able to play on it. There was also a caption saying that they had been planning a renovation the dining room that would allow the table to be stored in the kitchen so that the servants could cover it with food and then raise it up through a hole to the floor above where the diners would be waiting.  

After that, we checked out the Grand Trianon as well but our feet were aching and there weren’t many rooms open to the public so there wasn’t a whole lot to see. Lindsay had said there was a blue and gold theater somewhere nearby but after looking for a bit we realized it was way out of our way and decided to skip it since it was getting late and Kevin and I still want to go to the Louvre (our 2 day museum pass was expiring!!). That’s the problem with short trips – too much to see and never enough time. Lindsay and I didn’t even get to take Kevin up on his offer to rent a row boat for us so we could paddle through the canals! Next time…

So, if you go to Versailles, don’t get caught up in the extravagance of the palace – make your way around to the rest of the estate. It may sound cheesy, but I would also recommend watching Sophia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette. A lot of the film was filmed in Versailles and it will give you a bit of the history behind what you’re seeing.