Today, the plan was to visit the palace in Versailles. Feeling a bit tired, we dragged ourselves onto the train to begin the train trip to Versailles which would take around one hour from our hotel in Paris. The train trip itself was rather uneventful, I spent most of the journey reading one of my books.

Versailles Palace

Once we arrived, we walked around 10 minutes to the palace. The view from the front was, as expected, quite impressive although the full scale was a little hidden at first. I was impressed by the golden gates and tops of the roofing that gave the palace a real presence.

Our plan on the inside of the palace was to complete another one of the free audio tours to get a grasp of the palace and surrounding gardens. However, due to the size of the palace, we accidentally entered the wrong entrance, and we realized we were stuck in the one-way-only crowds until we did one lap of the first floor of the palace. The first floor was quite impressive although, to my understanding, this is not necessarily the main area and is certainly not the highlight of the palace despite the massive swarms of tourists.

After we finally made it out to the other side, we decided to get some lunch at the restaurant before trying again this time at the correct entrance. I quite enjoyed visiting the different rooms, imagining I was a noble hosting a lavish party. Some of the rooms/areas of the palace were particularly impressive such as the hall of mirrors which was a large hallway with mirrors on one side and stunning views of the vast gardens on the other. There were lots of old artwork that was kind of interesting, but I am always most intrigued by the designs of the ceiling and the paintings added to them.

After completing the tour inside the palace, which enabled us to see only a fraction of the entire palace, we proceeded to the back gardens continuing with the audio tour. We wanted to rent a golf cart to explore them further, but sadly we were not old enough. The gardens were still quite impressive and walking down the main stretch allowed us to get some great photos and take in the views of the palace’s rear.

Parisian Christmas Market

After catching the train back to Paris, the last activity for the day was visiting a Christmas market in Paris. The market we found ourselves at was much larger than the one we visited in Berlin (admittedly this one was open a bit earlier in the season before the larger Berlin markets). The market provided quite a great atmosphere with music, rides, carnival games, and lots of great food on offer. We each had a kind of sausage in mashed potato, similar to the Australian ‘bangers and mash’, a half litre of mulled wine which came with a cool cup that I kept as a souvenir and a crepe.