Getting reigned on

This morning started slowly, with a cup of coffee in bed before we went off to Galeries Lafayette Haussmann, a century old department store used by rich locals and cashed up tourists alike! While unfortunately we are neither, there was another reason to visit -- it has a great view of the city on the roof!

Once done, it was time to head over to the main attraction for the day: The Palace of Versailles, an 18th century Château which was the home of generations of French royalty. The interior was very impressive and stoked a lot of thoughts such as "Yep. Another royal chamber, this one's a different colour!" Admittedly, there were some incredible paintings in the palace, including a "hall of battles" which was about 50 metres long and filled with some of the largest works we've seen depicting famous French victories. This guy Napoleon showed up a few times, not sure what that's about.

While on this trip we've seen a few royal palaces and their grounds, none of which held up to the sheer scale of the palace grounds at Versailles. Near the palace there was beautiful contoured gardens and water features... But it just kept going, it went past impressively large and became almost comical! (We walked for almost an hour at it still hadn't ended) There were even multiple smaller "palaces" that other members of the royal family would live in (ones that you wanted on the same estate, but didn't want to risk seeing more than once a month)

Once the sun had gone down and we decided we had explored enough of the gardens, we took shuttle train-car-thingy back to the main palace and walked back to the real train which took us back to the city.

On the way back we grabbed a baguette and some butter for a classic Parisian dinner, before planning tomorrow and hitting the hay!

Step count: 23.8kLes mer