Versailles trip: Otherwise known as "the blog where she brags about her kids"

In preparation for a trip to Versailles Palace yesterday, I downloaded a Rick Steve's audioguide.  It is 52 minutes long and once I determined that it's him pretty much reading the tour book I have, I skipped listening to it.  I figured I'd read the book while the kids (plugged into a headphone splitter that represents the 15 wisest dollars I've ever spent) would listen.

At Versailles, I discovered the Byzantine (read: annoying) French age-based system for visiting national monuments.  Both kids visited the palace for free.  I paid eight Euros for Olivia to visit the gardens, since she's six.  Helena, age five, is free at both.  Neither of them met the "you must be eight" requirement to get the free audioguide.  What?

After seeing some tiny kids with audioguides, I swam back upstream and tried to get one for them, but I got the "it's only for those over eight" spiel.

Why?  It wasn't a particularly busy day.  Yes, rules are rules, but why?  I assume it's because they assume kids will not listen or will beat up the sturdy pre-recorded audio commentary devices.

Lame.

So I plugged the headphone splitter into the unit and let them listen.  Our system was to enter a room, plug them in while I looked around and then we'd move slowly to the next room while I listened to the commentary.  Even in the crowded rooms, the kids listened intently.  After about 45 minutes, they lost interest, but I was really proud of my five- and six-year-old girls for sticking with it.  Compared to some of the shoving, touching-things-that-say-don't-touch kids we saw, my vulgar little American girls were angels.  Take that, rude Rules Police Enforcer at Versailles!


Once in the gardens, Olivia got a map and had fun navigating.  They loved the fountains and flowers.  The ice cream was a particular highlight, of course.  Coming home, I used the splitter to plug them into a kids' Zumba music mix.  It made for 45 minutes of quiet calm, interspersed with Olivia singing "Sway" off-key.


Priceless!