Versailles -- How badly do you want to see it?

It's the largest palace we've ever seen.  It replaced the Louvre, not as a museum, but as a palace for Louis the XIV.  The sun king spent about half of France's gross national product to build it.  It is very, very large.  If you lived in it and used different parts of the palace for different family members (and they did), you might not see them for months.

That very nice museum pass that put us at the front of the line at Sainte Chappel and the Louvre had no impact at Versailles.  We showed it to the people at the entrance to the court yard and the rough translation from French into English is:  "Very nice.  Now join the end of the queue like everyone else."

The lines wound around 6 times and it took two hours

We wanted to arrive at 9 AM, but there were train problems today so we got there at 9:30.  It made little difference.  The wait is two hours this time of year.  There are "skip the line" tours.  Jan looked it up.  The cost is outrageous.  It's about $500 for a couple. 

Part of the reason is crowd control.  If they let everyone in as quickly as they could handle it there would be nowhere to put all the people.  As is, the crowd management inside is non existent.  You cannot really enjoy some of the rooms because they are too small for the number of people making their way through them.

Lines inside to get into various parts of the palace or for the audio guide

If you always wanted to see what Louis the XIV looked like you won't have too look far in the palace.  His portrait or statues are everywhere.  The palace is incredibly opulent.  The hall of mirrors, which is basically a giant ballroom, is the length of two football fields.  One wall is made entirely made of mirrors.  The opposite wall is glass to look out over the gardens.

Private church within the palace

Don't forget!  I am the owner.

Hall of mirrors, which actually handles all the people traffic quite well.

The main garden may look familiar to you.  If that rectangular body of water at the top of the picture looks somewhat familiar picture the Washington Monument at the top, in the center.  At the bottom of the frame, craftsmen are performing restorations.

There is also an orange grove.  The sun king wanted to be sun kissed.  The palace staff bought (well maybe they didn't really pay for the trees) orange trees and brought them back and kept them in large pots.  When the weather turned cold the trees were placed in greenhouses. 

It's good to be the king.