We left the beautiful Maison Borgeat at 9am sharp. Estelle came to check the rooms and see us off, but most of us feel so poorly we said a quick goodbye and didn’t really thank her properly for the week we’ve had. Luckily Jarrod is over the flu he had earlier in the trip so he could talk to her on our behalf.

Ross and Luke dropped us at the train station, Saint Jean, and left us all there with all the luggage while they returned the cars we had hired to the airport.

We purchased coffee and snacks and sat around waiting for an hour. We then encouraged the kids to buy lunch for the 11.58am train and headed to the platform. We went to the wrong end of the platform to board (not that there is any way to know that until you are ON the platform), and then had to make a mad dash at 11.50am down the long platform to find our carriage and seats and get the 14 people and suitcases on the train.

Meanwhile, Ross and Luke had been waiting at the correct end accidentally but couldn’t get up to the platform because Jarrod had all the tickets, so had to make a mad dash to the other end to enter the platform, and then a mad dash with Jarrod to meet the rest of us at the other end where our carriage was! We all collapsed in our seats for the three hour ride after all that excitement.

Once in Paris, Jarrod led us to the metro line to get to the Nation stop, close to which our hotel is located. We arrived right at check in time and dumped our bags and were able to sit down for a whole hour! Then it was back on the metro to then swap to the N Line to get to Versailles.

In our planning for this trip, we had realised we didn’t have a whole day to visit the Palace of Versailles but found a night tour that took us through some of the main rooms with a finale of fireworks and meeting Baroque Santa. We thought this was a good option to still see the Palace, and booked a 7.15pm session. We ate a quick dinner at the KFC around the corner to make sure we were there in time for our tour.

The tour was interesting but did not provide much historical information like an audio guide would during the day – it employed actors, dancers and musicians to give us an idea of what life was like in the palace, but everyone spoke only in French which made it difficult to understand.

The palace was beautiful, and the kids decided to do their own research on Marie Antoinette, the Treaty of Versailles, Napoleon and other other historical moments related to the palace.

We then returned to our hotel rooms, making tentative plans for tomorrow with the rider of we need to see if the unwell are well enough to join in or not…….we have seven double rooms here which means plans have to be made in the group chat rather than in person.