So, only a month between intending to finish these next and actually finishing them. In Paris we caught the train out to Versailles one day (not helped by one of the central lines being out of service without our realising) and reached it by lunchtime, far too late to avoid the hordes of tourists of which we now comprised a hordlet. J. and A. joined the massive queue for the palace tour, which wasn’t a good place for a two-year-old, so I took W. for a trundle in his buggy around the gardens. This is a pretty full day’s sightseeing in itself if you attempt to cover most or all of the open areas. The gardens have hidden speakers playing baroque music from within their giant hedges, which is enchanting until you’ve been listening to it for four hours.

We’d arrived just in time to miss the fountains, switched off through the middle of the day, but after criss-crossing the entire map they all came on just as the sun came out and just as we were about to leave. The gardens were by now even more packed with visitors, now that half of them had left the confines of the palace. Any hope of taking artificially empty photographs of palatial views was in vain, but I didn’t mind; the crowded shots in this gallery actually give a better impression of the 21st-century tourist experience in one the world’s most famous places.

12 September 2009 · Travel

Added by Anna on 14 September 2009.