The palace gardens were beautiful. The kids couldn’t believe how big it was. For whatever reason, Caroline started throwing a tantrum when we got there. It was hot and humid. Stupidly, I told her to wear leggings because it was supposed to rain today and I thought it’d get cold. It did not. It didn’t even rain. It just stayed humid and hot. So I think that was part of her problem. Second, she didn’t eat much for breakfast, just a smoothie and brownie. Yes, we’re definitely at that point where we just want her to eat *something* in hopes that it’ll make her less crabby. Basically, she just throws tantrums the whole time and the only thing to do is ignore her and walk ahead, and hope that she follows evetually. Usually she does, but she is far behind, dragging her feet.
We made our way to the mirror fountains where there was a musical water fountain show every few minutes. It was so great and started to put her in a better mood.
We made our way to the palace tour line for our noon tour. We got the kids audio guides, and joel and I were able to download the audio guides on out phones. France needs to take some lessons from England, because French audio guides were severely lacking for the kids. They didn’t have a kids audio guide for Versailles, and didn’t have headphones. They were devices that needed to be held by the ear, like a phone, which the kids got sick of pretty quickly. Plus, there wasn’t an interactive screen, like the London tours. Such a bummer for the kids. Caroline listened to the guide for about 30 mins before giving up.
We stopped at a souvenir shop. Bennett has been buying knight figurines, which he plays with nonstop. This shop has a tube of fairytale figurines, including a bride, princess, prince and groom. Well, needless to say, it was the best 20€ spent. Caroline followed us around the palace, never making a peep, playing with her toys. On one hand, it was frustrating because we wanted the kids to enjoy the oalace, but on the other hand, we could take our time and she was in her own world.
The palace tour took about three hours. There was so much more than when we visited previously. Then we made our way to the exit and we’re outside the palace. We were told we couldn’t enter the garden the same way we can, and would have to walk around to another garden entrance. Ok… so we started making our way around. It took maybe 20 minutes to find the other entrance. We saw some fountains and made our way to the Petite Trianon, my favorite place. On our way there, we left the garden area and were told we couldn’t enter back in becsuse we had used our two park entrances. It was so frustrating becsude the palace employees at the exit told us to enter in the Neptune door to go to the Trianon, but we actually didn’t need to enter the garden area at all go to the Trianon and now we had wasted our two garden passes, and it’d be another 10€\person to enter again. It was really surprising the information was so bad. Anyway, with no choice, we made our way to the Trianon.
It was another 15 minute walk and by the time we go there, Bennett was done walking, but Caroline joined me. The Petite Trianon was pretty small and didn’t take long to walk through.
Then we went to Marie Antoinette’s farm. It was just like I remembered. Super cute. The kids wanted to see the animals, but I wanted to visit the Grand Trianon, which closed at 6:00 and it was after 5:30. So I made my way, while Joel stayed with the kids. The walk to the Grand Trianon was a lot closer than it looked on the map, and I made it in 7 minutes. It was wonderful to tour on my own, and like the Petite Trianon, it was really small, only about 14 rooms to walk through.
Once I finished we had quite the dilemma. We were so far from the train station, it’d probably be a 45 minute walk to it, especially because we couldn’t cut through the palace gardens. Even going through the gardens, it’s probably be a 30 minute walk. By this point, we had over 20k steps, and never ate lunch (it was after 6:00) so we were all feeling it. We decided to pay 5€/person and take the tram back to the palace. We weren’t sure if the tram would take us into the garden area, or drop us off at the last garden exit we visited (about 20 minutes from the train station) but it was worth a try. Luckily, it took us back into the gardens, where no one checked for tickets. It was definitely worth the 20€ for the tram.
Once back at the garden, the sun was setting, so it was quite comfortable being outside. We took some pictures at the foundation that we couldn’t manage earlier in the day when Caroline was crabby. Caroline took some pictures of her figurines in front of the palace and the gardens. It all worked out well!
Then we started making our way to the train station. We visited some souvioneer shops and decided to stop at McDonalds and get the kids a little something to hold them over since it was nearly 7:00. Well we should’ve known from our previous experience that the McDonalds are suuuppoeeerrr slow. We missed a few buses waiting for our food, but eventually made it on the 7:40. We’d arrive in Paris after 8:00, or back at the hotel around 8:30, so we decided to stop at the Eiffel Tower to see the lights show. We needed to stop for food anyway, so it didn’t make much of a difference if we at at the Eiffle Tower or back at the hotel. Plus, Caroline’s Paris bucklist wish was to see the lights show.
We picked up a pizza for Caroline and a crepe for Bennett, then made our way to the mall area in front of the tower. Bennett was so content with his crepe he said, that'd be his French life, sitting outside, eating Nutella crepes. There were people selling things everyone and some guys were walking around selling bottles of wine. We were reminded that today is our 14th wedding anniversary so we bought a bottle and enjoyed it during the light show. It ended up being a really great night.
On our way back to the hotel, Bennett and Joel stopped at a pub to watch a soccer game. Joel said Bennett is really getting into it becsuse the entire pub cheers and sings. It’s definitely quite the experience. Caroline and I headed back to the hotel. We made it back around 10:15, and the boys evetually made it back around 11:00. We’re getting these kids into horrible habits, but we’re on Paris time. That being said, we rarely see Parisian kids out late, only other tourist kids. But lunch and dinner seem later here too. It’ll all work out well becsuse then the kids will be up later for Disney.
Today was our most steps walked by far this trip. I was just shy of 25k steps which is nearly 12 miles and I’m sure the kids are similar, I’d not more since they never walk in a straight line. Both kids told me I cannot talk about hike anymore becsuse they are no longer homesick and don’t want to leave France. They said they love getting out and exploring every day. It makes me so happy to hear them say this becsuse it reminds me of the times I was in maternity leave. My only goal was to get them out of the house and see different things. Even on the weekends when they were younger, before we started so many sports, we’d try to do something fun and different every weekend. Those adventure days are becoming much fewer when we’re at home. Hearing them say that really makes all the stress from planning and being on the trip worth it.
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