We caught an early bus down to the Palace, and were faced with a couple of options.
We could join the queue waiting for access to the inside of the Palace, or we could go and wander through the gardens, which at this time of the morning, were largely deserted. It looked like the queue to enter the Palace would be a good half hour wait, so we elected to go and wander the gardens first.
This would later prove to have been a disastrous decision.
We split up, as I knew I would want to walk quicker than Cath would. This allowed me to cover a fair bit of ground around the acres and acres of grounds. I walked over to Marie Antoinette’s Palace, but it wasn’t going to open until 10:30, and we, sadly, had too many things to pack into today to wait that long.
Cath and I bumped into each other somewhere in the Palace grounds, and walked back to the Palace together, in order to go inside. Upon arriving back on the forecourt, where we would line up, we found that what had been perhaps a half hour queue was now a 90 minute queue. D’oh! We took our place in line, and eventually gained access to the inside of the Palace. You can see the photos, and you’ve probably seen even better ones in history books. NONE of them do these rooms justice. You genuinely have to stand in these rooms to really appreciate the complexity, scale and brilliance of the art contained therein.
We left the Palace around 14:00, headed back to our Air B’n’B, and hit the road for Orly Airport, where we would be dropping off our car. With the car disposed of (with 5,000km clocked up in the previous 19 days), we caught a cab into Paris and found our next Air B’n’B. And just as we arrived, so did Janine. Janine lives in Rotterdam, and we had invited her to come down to Paris for a couple of days so we could catch up. She would prove to be a great asset over the next couple of days, as she spoke very passable French.
Once we’d got settled, we headed out for drinks and dinner, and an early night to bed. It would be a big day tomorrow (again!).
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