Bonjour, Monsieur le Président

Walk through the gardens of Palais de l'Élysée, discover the state rooms, have a look at the office and desk of the French President ... and have a short shake hands with François Hollande himself. Today was that day !

The Elysée is opening its doors today and tomorrow as part of the "Journées du patrimoine européen", the European Heritage Days. The door opening was at 8 am and we arrived around a quarter to eight to start queuing. The queue was already respectable at that time, and we still optimistic that it would start to move quite quickly, may be 1 hour of waiting, worst case 1.5 hours. In reality we started to measure the distance in cm by quarters of an hour. Anyway, after 3 security controls and a total of 4 hours in the queue, we were finally allowed to enter the Elysée garden through the south gate (la grille du Coq) and then started this very special visit. A man to whom we talked in the queue, was already on his third visit and explained us, that much more rooms are open for public viewing as in past years. So we went ahead and soon get stuck in the first corridor. A camera crew of French TV came the opposite direction and suddenly we realised, that they just followed the French President, Françcois Hollande, shaking hands with the visitors around, and also with us, totally by chance.

The tour of the Elysée then was interesting, to see the various reception and working rooms, as mentioned the Presidents desk and also very spectacular the 'Salle des Fêtes'. Outside the possibility to have an official visitor picture taken (then downloadable on Internet with a code) and leaving the Palais through the front gate.

That was a great experience ! Nothing that can be bought or booked, it kept us 6 hours on the feet and finally very happy.