How to Love The Palace of Versailles

How can you not adore wholeheartedly the Palace of Versailles? It's absolutely impossible. The place is incredible, and excessive, and huge and so totally worth a go!

I am a Versailles freak. I admit it! I love the place! 9 months in Paris, never seen the Arch a la Defence, been to a handful of museums, never been inside Gallery Lafayette but I've made it to Versailles...4...5...times...I think...

My recent visit (last Saturday and the most recent) reminded me exactly what I adore about the palace. There is a must do list to visit as there is for everything in life.

1) Stare at the Palace. You have to stare at it...for a long time...every time you go. It's huge. I'm from a country which just celebrated it's 400th anniversary. Versailles is over 330 years old. It's old, it's beautiful, it's a historical monument, it's Versailles!

2) Go inside. Why visit if you're not going to stick your head in and see the ridiculously pompous status in which ancient royalty used to lodge themselves. The Hall of Mirrors, Marie Antoinette's former chamber, the mini-Cathedral and the theater, all merit a visit.

3) Walk the gardens. In summer the fountains play. Because it's presently summer, they charge you to go in the cultivated/most pretty sections but you can still spend several hours walking around. The fountains play to hopelessly tacky music but walk through the rows of perfectly shaped bushes, trees, flowers, everything perfect and spotless.

4) Marie Antoinette's Hamlet. France's most famous queen had her own personal hamlet to escape the palace and court etiquette. Towards the end of her reign when heavily influenced by Rousseau, she wanted to get closer to nature and her natural state. Now, we have the leftovers from it...and they're quite pretty.

5) Lunch at the Canal. Every time I've been there, I ate something along the canal, watching the huge fish. You can look up the hill to the palace and see just about everything that's going on. Not to mention, it's cheaper (and more fun).

6) Take lots of pictures. The landscape makes for great backgrounds. I seriously saw 3 different couples getting their wedding pictures done in the gardens the last time I was there. It works great for pictures.

That's just a start. A good journalist might turn this into a three part series but I'm just a French student!