Photos show the difference between travel expectations and travel reality

[underahedgerow]

45. I have a trick for that, next time you're in Paris!

I've seen the Palace, I do love it very much, but it's the gardens that I love most of all, and particularly Marie Antoinette's English Hamlet at the far, far end of the gardens (over to the right on the map). Visitors rarely get that far, so it's usually mostly empty and very quiet. There is an enormous proper farm there with all sorts of lovely animals living very happy farm lives, with vineyards, herb gardens and roses, wisteria and jasmine. The cottage gardens are enchanting and sweet and my favorite!

That end of the park is mostly a public park. As it's a public park, you can enter for free via Route de la Rien, which is a few blocks straight on from the train station, through the center of Versailles village, which is very sweet and worth seeing as well. You walk straight up the pathway to Trianon along a tree lined boulevard and if you hit it on a lucky day, the ticket machine will be broken and you won't even pay to pass through Trianon and onto the English Hamlet! You can then go back through the grand gardens and exit through the Palace if you wish, although you must pay if you still wish to visit the Palace.

My daughter and I go at Christmas time, it's our tradition, and that's our secret route. We go early, stop for coffee in the village, carry on through the park to Trianon, the English Hamlet and that garden, then by lunch time we're at the bottom of the main concourse with the lakes and have a nice long lunch in our favorite restaurant there (inside, to the right, it's fantastic!). Then we stroll back up through the grand gardens and visit the gift shop, take loads of pictures and hit a particular antique shop in Versailles village and get the train back to Paris. It's a perfect excursion for a winter's day!

Viola!