Day 33 - Versailles and Chartres at night

11:30pm - Chartres

Today we went to Versailles.

I'd booked and ticketed a guided tour in English ahead of time and printed the tickets on my computer.  I highly recommend that approach.  It allowed us to skip the long ticket line.  While we waited for our tour, we walked through the gardens.

When it was time for our tour, we were shown to a comfortable waiting room and got hooked up with our headsets.  Then we were shown the private parts of the palace associated with the king's chambers.  It was nice since our group of 20 or so was alone in the rooms as we went.  We got to enter the chapel and sit in the theatre... the theatre is not part of the public tour at all.  That was cool.

When the private part of the tour was over, we were allowed to go through the public tour.  I had forgotton what a cattle call that is...  they do let throngs of people at a time.  It was crowded and my least favorite part of the whole Versailles experience.  But seeing the Hall of Mirrors is cool.  It is worth putting up with the throngs to get to that point.

After we got out of the palace, Laura and Katie went to see more gardens.  Charlie, Elodie and I had had enough, so we hung out for awhile and played a mean game of "Alphabet".

We returned to Chartres for dinner.  Since we'd neglected to make reservations, our choices were limited.  We ended up at Roma Nostra.  We actually quite enjoyed our meal there despite the terrible reviews on Trip Advisor.

After dinner, we went for a night time walk around the cathedral.  I'm glad we did.  We'd completely missed the light show, Chartres en Lumière, otherwise.  It was spectacular! Chartres is really alive at night.  There was a very cool 10-piece band (including bagpipes) playing in the market as we headed home.  It was a great ending to our time in Chartres.

Tomorrow we head to Giverny and then Paris!