We signed up for the full-day Versailles Tour with transportation from our hotel in the 7th…read morearrondissement.
Exactly at 0800 our guide, Quentin, arrived at our hotel with our driver in a new Porsche Panamera sedan for our trip to Versailles.
Quentin was personable, friendly, and a wealth of information about Versailles.
He handled all the arrangements and escorted us throughout virtually all of the accessible areas of the palace. He had also arranged for our lunch at Ducasse (yes, an Alain Ducasse restaurant located within the Versailles palace - see separate review of the restaurant, under Ore - Ducasse au Chateau de Versailles - spoiler - very, very good).
Quentin had an amazing range of knowledge about the palace and about the furnishings and artwork throughout. He was highly informative without overloading us with too much detail, and where appropriate, he simply got us to another amazing location and let us look around for ourselves.
His special guide permit allowed him (and us) to enter many of the rooms that require separate tickets to enter, and we bypassed some bunches of visitors through doors only accessible by licensed Versailles guides.
We visited on a cold January day (high was 40F that day) and that kept the crowds away. Quentin kept exclaiming that he had never seen so few visitors in Versailles. That was great for us, as we never felt crowded and in fact were all by ourselves in some of the rooms of the palace.
Following a great lunch, Quentin escorted us to the Petite Trianon and to the fantasy village built for Marie Antoinette.
Quentin pointed out how the palace, the Parc de Versailles, the landscaping were all carefully designed to awe visitors. Most visitors would never know how the hill that leads from the palace down to the statute of Apollo is designed to trick the eye and make new surprising vistas appear as you progress. Or how the lake was designed to make it feel much longer and farther through subtle engineering.
We also would never have known all the inside meta-symbology is spread throughout the palace and the art. All the associations with Apollo for Louis XIV (the "Sun King") hidden within the columns, wall and ceiling decorations mean a lot more when you know why they are designed that way.
After a full day of Versailles palace, Petit Trianon, and Marie Antoinette's fantasy village, we were glad to see our driver waiting for us on a street right next to the fantasy village, so we didn't need to hike a mile back to the palace parking areas.
We had a nice ride back to our hotel.
Highly recommended - we had an exceptional time. Quentin was a wonderful tour guide, and we appreciated his excellent English and encyclopedic knowledge of Versailles and the history of the French aristocracy.