Main Gate of the Palace of Versailles
We were very pleased to see that the queue to purchase tickets to the Palace of Versailles was quite fast. It seems that the staff at the shop were highly trained to handle large volumes of people and were able to process all of us very quickly. The palace turned out to be a few blocks away from where we were. From the distance you can already see how large this place actually is. You get a bit more appreciation on how large this is from above. A look at Google maps can tell you that this is some palace and certainly rivals or surpasses the scale of some palaces that I have visited in Asia.
Long Queue of Visitors to Enter the Palace of Versailles, the Entrance is to the Left of the Photo
I was under the impression that we will just flash our tickets and we will be let in immediately. How wrong was I. There was a massive queue to enter the palace. It seems to move quickly enough but there were just too many people. The queue would snake around five times before reaching the actual entrance. It was mind blowing to see how many people were visiting this place. Then again, this place won’t be a famous place for nothing. While this is not my first exposure to mass tourism in the west, it is still staggering to see how many people go on tour here. I do not know if it would have made a difference had we come here early. Then again, I remember how I was the only person at Segovia in Spain at eight in the morning, that was before busloads of tourists started coming.
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