Day 11: Chateau de Versailles

We arrived at Versailles around noon. The line to get into the place was INSANE. The pictures don't do them justice, but below is the line to get tickets. Lucky for us, we already had ours.

This is the line to get in the door, which was 3 times the length of the line to buy tickets. The line stretched back and forth across the courtyard 4 times. It didn't help that it was 85 degrees and we were in jeans!! This was probably the longest line I've been in since the Star Tours line of 1987 that stretched all of the way down Main Street. Fortunately, this line moved faster... about 90 min to get in.

The inside was amazing... We went to palaces in Austria and Germany, and Versailles puts those to shame. The size of this place (especially the exterior grounds/gardens) is unreal, although my legs became believers by the end of the day.

Below is the famous Hall of Mirrors. One side of the hall is covered in mirrors, reflecting the amazing view that you see in the second picture below. Nobody had seen anything like this before; not just because of the art and ornamentation, but because mirrors, especially big ones, were still very rare and expensive in the 17th century. In the summer of 1919, The Treaty of Versailles was signed in this hallway to officially end World War I.

In this view outside of the Hall of Mirrors, you can't even see where the palace grounds end. Not totally sure about the overall size, but I think I saw in a source somewhere that it's about 2000 acres.

Once we got back outside, we walked and walked to the other end of the grounds to see Mary Antoinette's little "peasant" getaway home.
Here are some more pics of the grounds & gardens. Louis XIV actually re-routed a river in order to facilitate the 50 fountains.