A Bike Tour of Versailles

Versailles has the unknown bounty of a magical, carefully tended 17th-century park, whose dimensions and details exceed the reach of any map or any guidebook. You can ride for hours without seeing a trace of today. It was meant to be experienced on horseback, and a bicycle is lower than a horse, but it never shies, bucks, or needs water, and when you look up as you pedal along, the carefully trimmed trees unfold in perfect symmetry above your head, and the subtle Pythagorean perfections of French ideals realign you into harmony. Read the article