How to zip through Versailles in 11 hours

Phew, what a day. This was to be one of the easier days because we were going to see only one thing. It was a day of learning and discovery. It was exhausting and totally delightful. The photos are on the big camera, so I will add some of my favorites later.

We decided to leave on the early train. Alarm clocks went off by 7AM, and we were out the door and on the way to the Les Halles Metro center. A quick stop at the little shop to purchase some chocolate breakfast treats, and then to the Metro. No espresso this morning.

The first order of business was to purchase a round trip ticket from here to Versailles. We had Museum Passes, so all that we needed was the transportation part. We walked up to the ticket window and in Frenglish (french and english) explained that we wanted roundtrip tickets. The clerk spoke rapidly in French only (she didn't appear to be as fluent in Frenglish as we were) and pointed at the two machines set off to the side. In English she said "just pick Versailles, round trip." That sure sounded easy enough.

We stood in line to use one of the machines. The screen gave three selections and we touched the screen several times, each time harder, to get our selection to register. Then we saw that there was a rolling pin thingy at the bottom. We rolled it and noticed that the selection changed. A click on the button to the right registered the selection. A long list of options appeared, all in French. At the bottom of the screen was a language selector, so we selected English and everything became a little easier to read. We selected "round trip outside of Paris" (we swear that we did!) and then the V to get the list of V places that you could select. Roll, roll, roll down to Versailles. Cool. Then the payment options came up: coins or card. Selected card, thinking that it was a credit card. Having learned at the train station that you had to leave the card in the reader, in it went and we waited. "Can't read". Pull the card out and put it in the other direction...and wait. "can't read". Hmmmm. Put it back in the first way and slid it out, slowly. "can't read". Well, d**n it, put in coins, then! So we pull out coins and as we are trying to determine if we have enough in 2e, 1e, .50, .20, .10, .02, and .01, the screen says "time has expired" and it quits. RATS!!! People behind us switch their wait from one leg to another, but no one says anything. We get out of line, smile, and open the machine up for those in line to use. After two people get their tickets, we have our coins pulled and ready to purchase the tickets. We stop midway through our purchase to help the young couple at the next machine, since they were rookies. I only got as far as showing them how to select "English", and then said "ok, you can take it from here." They looked grateful.

We boarded the Metro train first, and then did a quick change through the corridors and found our train, headed in the right direction. We were off and running on RER C line, headed for the Chateau.

Continued....