I know, you're done with Paris, you know I got along just fine there, you want to hear about Vienna and Venice and I know for a fact Edith is just DYING for Annecy pictures. But two things brought me back to posting about Paris. 1) It makes no sense to talk about Schonbrunn Palace in Vienna without first talking about Versailles as something to compare it to and, 2) I am completely anal and can't post my facebook pictures out of order and want to post them here before I post them on facebook, and I am percisely 2.5 months behind on my photo uploads because of this. (And yes, I realize this is again an example of my mild neurosis.)So, without further delay, I present to you Versailles:
Gorgeous isn't it? Of course it is. And I don't mean to diminish your efforts here, but you are sitting at home with your coffee, nightcap or other beverage of choice, and you didn't need to get lost and then stand in line in the heat for 2 hours to enjoy it. So perhaps you can imagine that it is even more gorgeous in person and the context of August in Paris.
Let me back up. The morning of our Palace adventure, Edith, Jorge, Jimmy and Tia were all still with us. We left Evan's apartment slightly before noon (more baguettes in hand) excited to view the most famous castle of all time (or at least the most famous castle of our limited K-12 American education). We couldn't all fit in Edith/Jorge's car, so John and I decided to take the metro to the Versailles train. We were actually pretty bummed about this because we figured we'd get there far behind the others and miss out on a lot of the day's sights. This thought was even more confounded by the fact that when we got the the station we thought we needed to be at, we realized that the only way to get to where we needed to go was to hop on one of 2 poorly-marked 'detour' buses. I can't quite remember the details of the situation, (because it happened 3 months ago) but I do remember that deciding whether or not to get on the bus lead to the first 'disagreement' John and I had on our trip. John wanted to get on one of the buses because we had a 50% chance of going in the right direction, and if we were wrong we could always backtrack, and I wanted to collect more information and make a more educated decision which would hopefully let us avoid these buses entirely. (For some reason getting on a bus without knowing for sure where it's going in a TERRIFYING thought for me... I know, how the hell did I survive 3 weeks in Europe?) John decided that he'd rather not see what it looks like when a 28-year-old throws a temper tantrum and so we studied the map for like 20 minutes before backtracking to a previous metro station and avoiding those scary detour buses all together. We arrived an hour and a half after our car-bound friends, and discovered that they had encountered stresses of their own.
It was precisely 512 degrees farenheight that day, and Versailles provides exactly negative 30 square feet of shade while you wait for the 3 million people in line in front of you to purchase tickets, and once you FINALLY get get your tickets, you must stand on ANOTHER MOTHER-F-ing-no-shade-3-million-people-long-line before you enter. Our friends were quite cranky, and it turns out, John and I were the winners because our metro detouring granted us 1.5 less hours in line than our friends, and they graciously let us cut in the line (behind them of course). We then of course had a solid 45 more minutes line, but my friends....
It was worth it.
We toured the inside, viewing various decorations of a series of Louis X's. Most impressive (somewhat predictably) was the famous Hall of mirrors. This room, constructed under Louis XIV, was later chosen by Prime Minister Clemenceau as the site where the (aptly named) Treaty of Versailles was signed, thus ending WWI. (How's that for an example of my K-12 American education?!) So cool. I wish they had the room set up so that there was a way for a tourists let me to get a picture in there without catching 400 other picture snapping tourists.... alas, it was not possible.
Touring the seemingly endless rooms led to exhaustion and general silliness, and so a few of us decided to brave the heat and wander over to the gardens.
We were told we needed to pay to enter the gardens and so we did, but later we realized we were swindled. You do NOT need to pay to enter the gardens. You need to pay to enter 'part' of the gardens, and this is ONLY during the time when they play orchestra music from secret speakers and blast the fountains, otherwise it's free. Let this be a lesson to you penny-pinching-garden-loving travelers.
We walked out into the gardens and were immediately accosted by gorgeous orchestra music that I must admit made our walk just that much more classy. All I was missing was a chilled cocktail and I could have spent all day there (in the shade of course). Even though I expected stone paths instead of dirt ones, and was much more impressed by the fountains than the giant hedge 'mazes,' (I chose to put mazes in quotes because it is not possible to get lost in them.... I tried.) the gardens really were quite beautiful. I think it was definitely worth paying extra for it, if only for the novelty of searching for the secret speakers and getting some pretty fountain pictures.
It was pretty close to the end of the day but we were feeling rejuvenated after enjoying some lovely (if overpriced) ice cream and decided to rush trough Marie Antoinette's apartment. Man, that girl could decorate, but don't take my word for it, you can decide for yourself. Let's compare the main house to the apartment:
Louis XVI Bedroom
(gold and guady everything)
(gold and guady everything)Marie Antoinette's Bedroom
(perfectly pink!)After Marie's apartment John and I said our goodbyes to our Geneva friends who had to work the next day, and set back to the city for one more full day of Paris adventures. Which means my friends, that there is at least one more Paris entry left. Will I blog about it in order? At this point I don't even know. Till then!
