Before we took off for
Amsterdam and
Barcelona, Ben and I
took a day trip to
Versailles over the summer. This had been on our list for awhile, but in the
winter the weather was too yucky, and the all the other times we wanted to go,
it either ended up raining or it was closed for a holiday.
We bought our tickets online the night before because it
said it would save us from having to wait in line. When we arrived, we were
greeted by a huge courtyard and the famous golden gates:
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| Versailles Courtyard |
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| Close-up of the golden gate at the entrance |
There was also a HUGE line. In this photo, you can see the the line (which doubled back a few times before that) on the far right-hand side. The front of the line is all the way up, to the left of the golden gate that you can barely see in the middle of the photo.
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| Loooooooooong line... |
Thank goodness we don’t have to wait in that, we said! We
went to the front of the line and showed the lady our ticket. She pointed at
the line, saying we would have to wait in line.
“But online it said that if you bought your ticket in
advance, you wouldn’t have to wait in line when you arrived,” I told her.
“You don’t have to wait in the ticket line,” she said,
pointing to another huge line on the other side of the courtyard. “This is the
line to get in.”
So, we had to wait in the huge line after all! It wasn’t too
bad – it only took about an hour to get through. The girl in line in front of
us hadn’t realized that it wasn’t the ticket line so when she finally got to
the front after an hour, they told her she needed to buy a ticket first. So the
poor girl had to go wait in the ticket line and then wait in the huge line to
get in again. :(
Versailles is, as everyone knows, ridiculously over the top
in terms of a display of wealth. You can begin to understand the motivation for
the
French Revolution visiting this place… Once you get through the huge line and beyond the golden gates, here is the central courtyard:
Inside, the bedrooms were the most unnecessarily fancy to me. It seems to me it would be hard to relax and actually sleep in these rooms!
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| King's Bed |
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| The Queen's Bedroom |
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| Kid's Room #1 |
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| Kid's Room #2 |
We didn’t get a great picture of the famous Hall of Mirrors
because there were so many people there, but this one is pretty good:
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| Hall of Mirrors with a million people |
There was also modern art being displayed throughout the
Chateau and grounds the day we were there, which I liked better than all of the
fancy Louis XIV stuff. Here are some pictures:
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| Spirograph-esque tapestry |
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| Crocheted lions |
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| A heart? |
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| High-heeled shoes made out of pots and lids |
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| A weird bird? |
After visiting the Chateau, we went out to walk around the
grounds. There are fountains everywhere and our ticket included admission to
the
musical fountain show. We took a seat on a set of stairs so we would have a
good view of the show. Unfortunately, the “musically fountain show” was really,
really stupid. They turned on some French baroque music and turned on the water
in the fountains. Wow. So if you go to Versailles and are wondering whether
it’s worth shelling out some extra cash for the musical fountain show, it’s
not. But the grounds were beautiful!
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| Grounds at Versailles |
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Part of the Musical Fountain show.
Just imagine some Rameau in the background and you've got the full effect... |
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| Lots of sculpted bushes and trees |
After watching the musical fountain show for 5 minutes and
deciding it was not worth watching, we walked down to the lake at the foot of
the grounds. It was a beautiful day and there were many people in boats on the
lake and relaxing on the grass.
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| Lake at Versailles |
Ben enjoyed laying down by the water:
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| Happy, relaxed Ben |
We stayed there, enjoying the weather and watching lots of
cute little kids for awhile before moving on. I had heard that
Marie Antoinette’s Hamlet was well-worth seeing, so we headed back to the
Petit Trianon and the Gardens, where this part of Versailles is located.
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| Marie Antoinette's English Garden |
All of the fancy stuff didn’t do too much for us, so we
decided to skip the Grand and Petit Trianons and walk around the
Garden. Marie Antoinette had her architect and painter design this for her. It's an English garden, which was fashionable at the time and was designed to look "natural," in contrast to the highly manicured and sculpted French gardens (like the grounds at Versailles). There is no map of the garden (that we saw anyway) and many
meandering paths, so it was easy to get lost! We wandered around, visiting
Marie Antoinette’s grotto and a cool cave.
The hamlet is adorable and still has a working farm on it!
We took lots of pictures:
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| Watermill cottage |
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| Panoramic view of the hamlet |
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| The Marlborough Tower, built to resemble a lighthouse |
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| Front of the watermill cottage |
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| The Royal Cows |
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As we were wrapping up our visit to the hamlet, it started
to rain. We hadn’t brought an umbrella because rain wasn’t in the forecast.
Quickly, we made our way back to the entrance to the garden, just in time for
it to start pouring. It was at least a 10 minute walk back to the Chateau
grounds, so we tried to stay as dry as we could under the trees. Nevertheless,
we were absolutely soaked and freezing (the temperature dropped into the low
60s - in July! - when the rain started) when we got back to the Chateau grounds, so we
ducked into a restaurant to dry off for a bit.
Despite the rain at the end, we had a great day and a
wonderful visit. Definitely go to Versailles if you’re in Paris and make sure
not to miss Marie Antoinette’s Hamlet!
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