Versailles Is Not a Half-Day Trip: A Late-Spring Paris Rethink | Emily Rosen

The first time I took Lila to Versailles she was eight, the trains were on strike, we got there at 11:30am, and we waited in a line that wrapped around the courtyard for ninety minutes in a damp wind that I had not packed a jacket for. By the time we got to the Hall of Mirrors she was holding my hand the way a person holds a hand on a stretcher. We saw approximately four chandeliers. I bought her a hot chocolate at the cafe by the exit for nine euros and we got back on the train. I told everyone we had “done” Versailles.

That was 2020. I have tried, in various ways, to do Versailles as a half-day trip three more times since. Reader: it cannot be done. Not with a teenager. Not unless you arrive at the gate at 8:30am with pre-booked tickets and a complete indifference to the gardens, which are, in fact, the entire point. My friend Vivi, who is French and a translator and lives in the 11th, has been telling me this for six years. I have finally, at thirty-eight, listened.

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The Versailles math nobody does

Here is the time accounting I did this March, sitting at Vivi’s kitchen table with a glass of rosé and a notepad, because I had finally gotten tired of being lied to by other people’s blogs.

RER C train from central Paris: 35–55 minutes, depending on what god you have angered.
Walk from station to gate: 12 minutes.
Line for security and ticket-scan, even with timed entry: 30–60 minutes in any month you would actually want to be in Paris.
Chateau walk-through: 90 minutes if you are walking briskly and not stopping for a single audio-guide bench.
Gardens: a real visit is 2–3 hours. A pretend visit is 30 minutes of you standing at the top of the Latona steps taking the same photo as everyone else.
Trianon and the Hameau (Marie Antoinette’s farmhouse village, which is the actual best part): 90 minutes more.

That is, on the floor, six hours of moving. With a meal break it is seven. With a teenager who needs a bench every forty minutes, it is eight. You cannot do that on a half-day.

The Seine in late spring, when Paris finally exhales. This is where I should have been the whole time.

The new rule: it’s two days or it’s skipped

If we are going to Versailles, we are going overnight. There is a small hotel near the chateau gates that has rooms for about 120 euros in May and that lets us do gardens-in-the-afternoon, dinner-in-the-village, chateau-the-next-morning at 9am with the early-access ticket. By 1pm we are back on the train to Paris and we have actually seen the place. If we are not doing two days, we are skipping it. This was Vivi’s rule before it was mine. “Pourquoi tu te fais ça?” she said. “Why are you doing this to yourself?” I had no good answer.

A different garden. Smaller. No line. No one yelling at you to move along.

Where we go instead

Musée Rodin and its garden — the garden alone is eight euros. The Thinker is there. There is a café in the back. Lila lasted forty-five minutes here without complaining, a world record.
Sainte-Chapelle — the line is shorter than Notre-Dame’s, the stained glass is hallucinogenic, the whole thing takes under an hour.
The Marais on a Sunday afternoon — you walk, you stop at Rue des Rosiers, you eat a falafel, you poke into the vintage shops on Rue de Turenne. You are not in a line.
Parc de Bagatelle in May — the rose garden peaks late May into early June. Tourists never go. Closest thing to Versailles’s gardens without the punishment.
A picnic at Square du Vert-Galant — the little triangle of grass at the tip of Île de la Cité. Pick up bread and cheese at the boulangerie on Pont Neuf. You will accomplish nothing. You will not regret it.

A boulangerie window I have stopped in front of three years in a row.

What Vivi packs for the day

She wears flats. She brings water. She has a tiny zip pouch in her bag with one lipstick, a metro card, and a credit card, and that is the whole bag. I have tried to be more like Vivi for six years. I have made it to where I bring a small tote with eBags packing cubes inside, which is the polite American version of what Vivi does. I also keep an AirTag in the tote, because of the Madrid pickpocket incident I will not be discussing.

Where to stay

When I am not at Vivi’s spare room, I book Le Petit Hôtel in the 6th; my friend Melissa likes Hôtel Jeanne d’Arc Le Marais, a tiny old-school place where you can hear the bells from Saint-Paul. Neither will impress your in-laws. Both are walkable to the things you are actually going to remember.

Vivi’s neighborhood at the hour before dinner, which is the actual best hour in Paris.

The thing Vivi said

The last night in March, Vivi’s daughter Eloise was doing homework at the kitchen table and Vivi was opening a bottle of something cheap and pink, and I told her I felt guilty about not seeing Versailles. She paused. “Em,” she said, “you live in New Jersey. Do you go to the Statue of Liberty every time someone visits you?” And then she handed me the wine without waiting for the answer, because the answer was obvious.

The Versailles I built up in my head — the chandeliers, the gardens, the I-took-my-daughter-to-Versailles thing — was always going to be a fantasy version of itself, because that is the trick all of those big monuments play. They will give you the photo. They will not give you the day. The thing I am trying to do in Paris now, late spring, divorced, traveling with a fourteen-year-old who would rather be at a concert: just have the day. The actual one. The one that ends with us walking back to the hotel through the Marais arguing about where to get gelato. That, it turns out, is the souvenir.