Versailles, Sainte-Chapelle & the Catacombs

Back in Paris after Belgium, the second half of the trip turned out to be even more packed than the first.

Palace of Versailles Chapel

Versailles got a full day on its own, and it needs one. The Hall of Mirrors is the room everyone comes for, and it does not disappoint — seventeen mirrored arches reflecting the gardens outside, gold from floor to ceiling. But the King’s and Queen’s apartments were just as striking, and the Hall of Battles, lined with massive history paintings, is easy to walk past quickly and a mistake to. Outside, the gardens are enormous — we wandered out past the main grounds to the Grand Trianon and Petit Trianon, and finally to the Queen’s Hamlet, Marie Antoinette’s thatched-roof mock village built as an escape from palace life. It’s a strange, quiet contrast to the gold-and-mirror opulence just a walk away, and worth the extra distance to see.

Hall of Mirrors

Back in central Paris, Sainte-Chapelle might be the single most underrated stop of the whole trip. From the outside it’s unassuming; inside, the walls are almost entirely stained glass, floor to ceiling, glowing when the sun hits it directly. It’s a fraction of the size of Notre-Dame and, in some ways, more breathtaking.

Speaking of which — Notre-Dame itself, still visibly mid-restoration, was still worth standing in front of. Seeing the cathedral this way, scaffolding and all, is its own kind of memory; it won’t look like this again.

We spent an evening just sitting along the Seine as the light went down, followed by a dinner of escargot and steak frites — about as classically Parisian as a meal gets. Another night was for the Panthéon and a wander through the Luxembourg Gardens, watching kids push toy sailboats across the fountain, which is somehow still a real thing people do here.

The last major stop, and the strangest one, was the Catacombs of Paris — narrow underground tunnels lined, floor to ceiling in places, with the bones of millions of former Parisians, relocated here in the 18th century when the city’s cemeteries ran out of room. It’s cool, dim, and genuinely eerie in a way none of the rest of the trip was — a hard contrast to the gold-leaf opulence of Versailles just days earlier, and somehow that contrast is exactly what made it memorable.

Highlights: Versailles’ Hall of Mirrors & the Queen’s Hamlet · Sainte-Chapelle’s stained glass · Notre-Dame mid-restoration · The Catacombs of Paris