Paris - Wednesday, July 13, 2016

Versailles - the vast palace and gardens of Louis XIV, Louis XV, Louis XVI, and Marie Antoinette.  It's southwest of Paris so we had to take an RER train out of center city to get there - about a 35 minute ride once we were on the train.  When you arrive in the village of Versailles, it's another 10-15 minute walk to get to the golden gates that face the town.  The grounds and gardens open at 8am, so there were people walking their dogs and jogging on the paths.  We did a preliminary scouting trip to see the other side of the palace and to get the layout of the gardens, but then went back to wait in line.  The place gets crazy-busy in the summer - over 10 million people visit Versailles each year - and that was apparent as we toured the rooms of the palace.  No expense was spared on the opulence of the place, that's for sure.  Marble staircases, colorful textiled walls with matching window dressings, embroidered borders on the walls, fancy furniture (although not particularly comfortable, I would bet) and plenty of portraits and other artwork.  Margo overheard one of the guided tour guides say that the reason the beds were so small/short was because the monarchs didn't sleep laying down - they sat up in bed!  I can just picture Marie Antoinette in her big poofy dress sitting up in bed so she didn't mess up her hair overnight! 

For me, the real star attraction of Versailles was the grounds themselves, not the palace, although that was impressive.  The gardens of Versailles are populated with numerous elaborate fountains (which, unfortunately, only are turned on for the days when they have fountain shows), meticulous flower gardens, tall hedge mazes, and lots of wooded areas.  In the center of the grounds, is the grand canal, an enormous cross-shaped pool - when I say enormous, I mean it was 3.5 km to the other end of it!  (Dawnie, that's 2.17 miles)  And I don't think that distance includes the detour around one arm of the cross to get to the far side.  Margo and I opted to rent bicycles to explore the grounds and the canal further; Dad and Ellen decided to walk.  We agreed to meet in an hour, and it was a good thing, because it took us that long to get all the way around the canal and back again.  Of course, we didn't just stick to the route directly adjacent to the canal - we had to wander through the wooded paths a little too.  It was rough riding over a brick paved path, but we got to see the pastures on the far end of the grounds, filled with sheep, horses, and cows.  We rode back down the other side of the grand canal and around the front end, where we could get a good look at the Apollo fountain and the temporary installation, Waterfall by Olafur Eliasson, an Icelandic-Danish artist.  We saw a picture of it in Time magazine before our trip.  When looking at it head-on you can't really see the mechanisms that pump water up several stories from the canal below and allow it to cascade back down, so the waterfall appears to come out of nowhere, dropping from the sky.  But we saw the scaffolding prior to the palace opening when we walked through the gardens, and you could see it from the sides and the back. 

Having explored the grounds a bit, we filled out the rest of the day touring the Grand Trianon, Petit Trianon, and Marie Antoinette's private village.  Louis XIV had this smaller palace built so he could escape the royal court and spend time with his mistress, but Napoleon also lived here, and Charles de Gaulle also used it as president of France.  Lots of pink marble here and more gardens, but nothing as elaborate as the main palace.  The Petit Trianon was given to Marie Antoinette as a gift by Louis XVI, and that's where she preferred to spend her time, although she also had a private residence nearby, which was under renovations, but it was surrounded by a quaint little village of cottages, a mill, and a farm with goats, chickens and rabbits.  By then we were pretty worn out - we spent 8.5 hours at Versailles that day - so we started back toward the main palace and the exit, but we got turned around and a little lost wandering the paths so it took a bit longer than we would have liked - a lot of "you can't get there from here" going on!  Finally, we got back to the train station and were on our way back to the flat and some dinner!