Paris, France: Versailles

Today was another beautiful day! We awoke early to catch the RER train to Versailles. I had read that we needed to be there before it opened to get in line. We purchased tickets last night online and it wasn't until Danny had purchased them that he saw that they needed to be printed. We did not have a printer in our apartment so we decided to just wing it and hope we could get through with the receipt and the bar codes he had received when he purchased. We made our way by metro to the RER line. The RER train was a little too comfortable and we all fell asleep! I woke up when I heard some people talking about Versailles and realized we were stopped at the station! After I woke everyone up we quickly exited the train. Versailles is very close to the train station and we found our place in line. We were thankful we had arrived early as the line quickly formed into a long trailing line. We didn't have to wait long and we were thankful that they were able to scan each code and let us in! At Versailles you can pick up free tour recorders that play a description of what you are seeing when you press the appropriate number of what you are looking at. I thought this was a great idea and it was very helpful as we had no clue what we were looking at in the Palace. After touring our way through the palace we exited into the beautiful manicured gardens. Versailles is enormous and it would have taken most of a day to walk and see all of it. We decided to just visit the fountains that had a music or water show. We liked two out of three of what we saw. We also ate lunch in the gardens which was very convenient! After touring what we wanted to see of the gardens, we boarded a tram to take us out to the Petit Trianon. We didn't really have time to tour the Trianon as well. The Petit Trianon was really interesting to tour because there is a Hamlet there that was created under the instruction of Marie Antoinette. It was a little Austrian style mini home place designed as a retreat for the Queen and her children. There was a working dairy as well as many vegetable gardens. It was a stark contrast from the opulence of the Palace. After touring the Hamlet and then stepping inside of the Petit Trianon (her mini palace retreat), we boarded the tram back to the Palace. We were ready for a snack at this point and found a little ice cream shop in town before getting on the RER and going back to Paris. We had some time at home to relax and nap until dinner. Dinner was with our family Laurene, her husband Benjamin, their son Lucas and Laurene's mom, Cathy! Cathy came from Limoges just to see us. Laurene chose a restaurant local to them, and it was delicious! There were a lot of unfamiliar dishes on the menu and we weren't sure if we would like them, but everyone was happy with what they chose. The girls even tried Foie Gras! They could not convince their mother's to try it though. We enjoyed playing with Lucas, who we had not seen since he was a baby! It was such a great ending to a fun day!