Castles · Tour

Versailles Full-Day Passport with the Trianons and the Hameau

A full-day passport with a private professional guide, and the Trianons are inside the price rather than sold as an extra. That is the difference: most Versailles days stop at the palace gates and leave the rest of the estate for another time. The morning is guided: the Great Royal Apartments, the Hall of Mirrors, where the mirrors are set to throw the light back into the room, the Queen's Bedroom, the Royal Chapel with its coloured marble floor, and the stables. The drive out passes near St Cloud and takes 45 minutes to an hour depending on traffic. The afternoon is yours, at the Trianons: the mansion-scale lodges where Louis XV and Louis XVI went to work away from the court, and the Queen's Hamlet, where Marie Antoinette played at being a shepherdess from 1783. The gardens are Le Nôtre's, and how you see them depends on the season: the groves on foot in summer, a horse-drawn carriage in winter. The Fountain Show runs April to October on Saturdays and Sundays, and from mid-May to the end of June on Tuesdays, set to music written for the court of Louis XIV. Entrance fees are included. Meet the Extime Travel ambassador outside 6 Avenue du Dr Brouardel, 75007 Paris. You are dropped back at the same point.