We are staying the Loire valley in October and need to get to Versailles. Is there a direct way or do we need to go via Paris. We only have the one day (Friday)to see the palace and this will include travel from Tours so need an option that leaves early morning and doesn%26#39;t take too long. We were going to hire a car but has proved very expensive. Also we have 2 young children is it worth taking them into the palace or are the gardens enough for them (ages 5 and 3). How long approx does it take to see the inside of the palace (my youngest has very short tolerance for these sorts of things)? Any advice is greatly appreciated. Cheers.
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Count on 2-1/2 hours and 2-3 transfers - it%26#39;s doable, but %26quot;easy%26quot; isn%26#39;t part of it.
That%26#39;s 5 hours and 6 transfers in one day -- with very small children, I%26#39;d advise putting this off for a later trip.
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We are actually staying in Versailles overnight before heading into paris the next morning for eurostar to London, forgot to add that. I%26#39;m hoping to get at least a few hours to look around the palace.
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There isn%26#39;t really any easy way to get from Tours to Versailles with four adults and two young children and all the baggage. The %26quot;normal%26quot; way would be to take the TGV from Tours to Gare Montparnasse in Paris and then get to Versailles using the Métro and RER (suburban rail) system. This would also be the quickest and, depending on what date you are traveling, possibly the cheapest. I just checked for fares on 14 October and on one afternoon TGV departure from Tours found PREMs (heavily discounted advance purchase fares ) totalling €95 for your entire family. On trains where the PREMs seats had already been sold (most of the early trains and some of the later ones) the fares were around €250. So since you have to travel to Paris anyway you should not waste any time making a decision and booking your tickets. RailEurope at raileurope.co.uk would probably be your easiest place to book your train travel but you could also use tgv-europe.com and see if one is cheaper than the other. If all the PREMs seats are sold for the date you need to travel there are slower (2.5 hours vs 1 hour) trains that have lower fares.
To get from Montparnasse to Versailles you would need to take the Métro and then change to the RER C Line to get to Versailles. Count on that taking at least an hour. The cost will be about €25 for all of you round-trip. The following day you will have to take the RER back to Paris and change to Line B to get to Gare du Nord for the Eurostar. So yes it can be done, but even the %26quot;easy%26quot; route is a bit problematic with small children and a lot of baggage.
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I would not bother with Versailles this trip. Too much hassle for very little return. For a group with older kids or just adults,, go for it, but, since you say your 3 yr old has %26quot; very short tolerance for these sorts of things%26quot; then he/she will in fact not tolerate the palace part of Versailles well at all. It will be crowded etc ,,and to get anthing out of it takes about 1.5 hours,, although if one had a small child they could run through it faster,, ( pushing through crowds though).
The grounds and gardens would be lovely though, there is a trolley that takes you down to Marie Antionettes Hamlet,, where there are animals to see, and ponds stocked with Koi, fun to see,, but, would I go to all the trouble on this trip just for the gardens. No.
You live in Scotland, it is reasonable to assume you can get over to France again in a few years,, so I say leave it till wee ones are bit older.
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Thankyou all I am seeing a pattern here perhaps I need to rethink our plans. Really would love to see Versailles but perhaps with the kids and in laws in tow it might be a bit too much :( Oh well just means we need to come back to paris another time.
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Good thinking!
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