A different experience

We’re at the golf club. None of our usual group is there. We get talking to a couple we’ve known on & off for a long time, long before they got together.

They recently went to gay Paris to celebrate JD’s birthday. It was just a weekend break.

Among other things they visited Versailles. JD hated it, although he will allow the gardens are spectacular. The only room in the palace he like was the Hall of Mirrors.

I found myself remembering the two visits to Versailles I made when I was still at school. I’d been impressed by the palace though neither time did I have the time to really explore the gardens, or visit Le Petit Trianon.

It transpired that JD’s real problem was the crowds. He’d felt pressed in, hardly able to move. He’d felt he was herded around. Maybe part of the attraction of the Hall of Mirrors for JD is the fact it is such a huge room, it could take the number of visitors better.

Now my thoughts moved to my feeling about Venice and the crowds there. We weren’t that pressed, not shoulder to shoulder, but I suspect we would have been if we’d actually queued up to go around either St Mark’s Basilica or the Doge’s Palace.

It certainly wasn’t that bad when I had been to Versailles. Admittedly I had been in April rather than the end of June.

But I wonder if the real difference is the fact I went in1969 & 1971. In those days, international travel wasn’t as popular as it is today. You certainly wouldn’t have got the number of people from the Far East or Africa that we saw in Venice recently. Visitor numbers at these big draws must have shot up. But I can’t help wondering if the experience felt hasn’t reduced.

Another person at the golf club chipped in he hadn’t found Versailles that bad. He too had gone out of the main tourist season. Maybe it is just the time of year rather than the decade that made the difference.