Day thirteen took us to the Palace of Louis XIV, Louis XV, and Louis XVI. We figured that there would be lots of trains going to Versailles, so we didn't really rush to get to the train station. We stopped at a pastisserie to get some pain aux chocolat and jus d'orange to take along with us. When we got to Gare Montparnasse, we found that we had an hour or so before the next train, so we went outside and had our little breakfast, then went inside the station to get Penny some chocolat chaud. We hopped on the train and took the 15 minute ride to the Versailles train station. From the station we walked a little more than a kilometer or so to the palace.

We got our tickets, and then went and reserved a spot for one of the guided tours later on in the afternoon. Penny wanted to get one of the audio tours, so we got some of those little telephone deals, and was able to listen to that as we walked around the palace. The hall of mirrors was the site of the signing of the Treaty of Versailles which ended the first World War.
It was all quite decadent, with parquet floors and paintings like you wouldn't believe. In its heyday there were something like 10,000 people living in the palace and on the grounds. There were rooms upon rooms of velvet wallpaper and such. Much of the furniture is gone, as it was taken and sold during the French Revolution.

After we had wandered through the Hall of Mirrors, the Hall of Battles, and the Drawing Rooms of War and Peace, we went to the Hall of Dining and picked ourselves a little pique-nique lunch and went out into the Marble Courtyard and enjoyed what the French call a "sandwich" along with what the French call "chips" and a "biere." We also enjoyed what the French call a "brownie." Yes... the language barrier was very difficult at times.

Penny and I walked around the gardens, which are in a state of repair. On Christmas night in 1999, there were severe winds at the Palace, which destroyed somewhere in the neighborhood of 10,000 trees on the chateau grounds. Penny hadn't been terrible impressed with the gardens there, and it seems that I came across this information when we got back from the trip... that made it a little bit easier for Penny.
We took our guided tour after that, and were able to see the kings' living areas as well as the chateau's Opera House. When the tour was all finished, Penny and I walked back to the train station and went back to Paris. We went to another café near our hotel where we had what could have been our only rude Frenchman experience.

We went up to the café and looked at their menu. Penny thought that it looked fine, and a waiter came nearby. I said to him, in French, "a table for two, to eat." He told us we could sit anywhere. So we did. There were 3 tables for two all in a row. One couple was sitting at one end. Rather than take the other end, and perhaps blocking the middle table, we took the middle table. We sat there for some time, watching the people around us being served and given menus, when it started to occur to us that we were not being served. A waiter placed two menus on the empty table next to us, which we picked up to look at after a while. After some more time passed, we decided to leave... and without a word, we did just that. C'est la vie.

We found another place and enjoyed some dinner and wine... and then we went back to our hotel. There, we bought a bottle of Champagne (for Penny said that she must have some Champagne while she was in France), and went out into the hotel's gardens to drink that and write a few more postcards. We called it a night, and slept in preparation for another museum-filled day.