We started off early with a croissant from next door and headed for the train to Versailles. It takes about an hour in all to get there, and we got off the train with a horde of other people also heading off towards the palace. I read a statistic that Versailles gets 3 million visitors a year. Since it was a nice, sunny Saturday it was plenty busy. We got the “passeport” to tour everything – the palace, the dauphin and dauphine apartments, special exhibitions, Trianon, the Marie-Antoinette estate, the gardens, and the “grandes eaux muicales” (fountain show).
There really was too much to even describe. Everything is just so grand and spectacular. At the same time, you’re glad it’s there to see, but on the other hand you can really understand where the French people of 1789 were coming from. It’s just obscene amounts of money: entire rooms of marble, huge statues, the hall of mirrors. When you’re walking through the palace from room to room, bedroom, antechamber, drawing room, etc, it almost feels like it was laid out with the intent of being a museum. The rooms just flow from one to another in a big circle on each floor. The Queen’s bedroom was one of my favorite rooms of the palace. The wall covering and patterns of the linens were unique from the other rooms. After the palace, we toured a separate part that’s only open on weekends, the “Mesdames Apartments”. This is where the daupin and/or dauphine would live. Louis XV had something like six or eight sisters, and they each had their apartments here. The décor was different from the main palace, colors softer and more pastel, and I loved the intricate wood carvings of the walls. It’s quite a walk from there to Trianon (Grand and Petit), so we saw a lot of the gardens on the way out, the fountains, the canal. We got some ice cream along the way.
Grand Trianon and Petit Trianon are like mini palaces out in the grounds, sort of retreats or guest quarters, not that there wasn’t enough room at the palace to begin with. Around Petit Trianon is Marie-Antoinette’s estate, and the “Queen’s Hamlet”. Louis XVI gave her all this area when he took the throne, so it was entirely hers, and you can tell that the style was more eclectic, different from the traditional style of the palace. She built her own theatre out there, had several garden areas and monuments, but the most outrageous part was the Queen’s Hamlet. There’s basically a little village out there, 12 buildings, with a farm (with real animals still there today!) and it looks like something that Disneyland Paris must have misplaced. Very countryside feel to it, supposed to mimic her family’s vacation home in Austria, and she built it for her and her children to get away from the palace life. There was a little garden behind one of the houses, and I hopped the hedge and picked a strawberry while Kyle stood guard. J He wanted to save the seeds and plant them in Tucson, but it got squashed on the way back on the train, so I don’t think we’ll be able to have the royal strawberries in Arizona.
Once we’d seen everything out there, we walked back to the main garden area for the fountain show. This is really just the fountains turned on. They’re off the rest of the time, only on for a couple hours on weekends. The views are so amazing, I can’t believe just how much space they had there. They have numerous little stands selling fresh squeezed orange juice from the Versailles oranges. They really do just cut up two oranges and put them on the juicer when you order a glass. Let me tell you though, it’s the best orange juice I’ve ever had. We took some more pictures, sat by the fountain for a while, browsed the gift shop, and realized we’d been there, pretty much walking around the whole time for seven hours. Tired, we hopped the train back to Paris, bought a warm baguette from our bakery, and I made some pasta with fresh sauce for dinner, which we had with a glass of wine out on the patio. Overall, a very full day, and the most pictures yet- over 300 that day alone! So I hope you enjoy them :)
Steph
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