Paris, je t'aime! Part 7: The Palace of the Sun King

In Part 6 of the Paris blog posts, we closed out our second day in the city by visiting the D'Orsay and the Eiffel Tower, walking 15 miles in the process.

At the extremely famous Chateau of Versailles,

driving around in a golf cart.

Read on for more...

We'd been up pretty late the night before, so although we both slept well after walking all over the Left Bank of the Seine, the early alarm on Friday morning did not sound particularly friendly.  However, we hauled ourselves out of bed and got ready for the day - we were headed to Versailles!  Like the Pompidou Centre, Versailles is another spot I've always wanted to visit on a trip to Paris (why these two stuck with me so concretely, I have no idea, but they really did).  Versailles is actually about 15 miles outside of Paris, but you can easily get there on one of the RER trains which criss-cross the city.  We had another awesome breakfast in our hotel's cave, and then it was off to the Metro to connect with the train.  Along the way, we stopped in a nearby bakery and grabbed some pastries to go, as we couldn't possibly miss the chance to eat as many carbs as possible (my life motto, people).

"Going down to the breakfast cave, ma'am?"

After walking 15 miles the day before,

we were happy to take the elevator.

My raspberry financier was shaped like a heart!

One end of the RER C line is Versailles, so it wasn't hard to figure out where to exit, and from there, we followed the hordes of tourists to the chateau itself.  

There it is!

Behind the herds of people!

"Hey, Louis, which way to the RER station?"

"Cool, thanks!"

While our Paris Museum Pass included admission to the chateau (not the gardens, as we'd learn later), you still had to wait in line for security check, so we hopped in and killed time taking pictures of the courtyard.

We'll be in there soon!

This was the line around 9:30am or so - 

when we left around 12:30, 

it was about 5 times as long.  Go early.

We made it through the security checkpoint without issue, and we started our Rick Steves tour of the famous rooms in the chateau:

A few shots from the interior courtyard

We started by peeking into the royal chapel; according to Rick, the invited aristocrats would stand on the bottom floor of the chapel, but they'd face backward, toward the Louis in residence, who would be standing over them on a balcony.  He'd be facing the priest, so essentially, they'd be worshiping him as he worshiped God.  What a life, man.

The part of the chapel you can see from the bottom floor

The ceiling of the royal chapel from the top floor

The balcony where Louis would stand and pray

We were heading toward the king's apartments and the truly famous bits of the chateau, but as you might imagine, there was tons to see on the way.  Crazy amazing details and opulence everywhere.

The two shots above are from what they call

the Gallery of Battles,

which commemorated wars like the Crusades and whatnot.

Louis XIV himself

The pigeon of Versailles

I imagined Versailles as being overly rococo -

lush draperies and colorful candelabras everywhere - 

and certainly, it has plenty of that.

However, other parts of it are more restrained,

and have gorgeous white marble and terrazzo flooring, like this.

It was a nice visual break.  

Okay, now we're getting into the really good stuff.  The King's wing had spots like the King's bedchambers, correspondence room, and so on, but it also had a lot of rooms used for receptions and general tomfoolery.  Each room was named after the Roman god or goddess portrayed in the center of the ceiling, and it influenced the activity that occurred in the room.  For example, the Venus room was where the trysts occurred (Venus being the goddess of beauty and love), and the bodyguards hung out in the Mars room (Mars being the god of war).  All of the rooms were over the top in their decoration, and when I originally imagined Versailles, this was what I thought of.

Here we go!

Lots of tour groups in the Hercules Room

Peeking out at the gardens

Some of the original, flocked velvet wallpaper.

Want to touch.

The gardens look so peaceful...

and empty of other tourists

Pretty sure this is the Mars room

Okay, yeah, the Mars room.

I left this shot unedited, so you can see the crazy

decoration all around the wall.

Just nutso.

Eventually, we made our way to the cream of the crop, the piece de resistance, the most famous room in the entire chateau - the Hall of Mirrors.  I have to say, it didn't disappoint.  I read a really interesting book before heading to Paris, The Essence of Style by Joan DeJean, and it discussed how Louis XIV and his finance minister tried to set up a native mirror industry to compete with what was currently occurring in Venice.  It truly ended up being a tale of intrigue as they stole away some of the Venetian glass blowers, who were hunted down by their original government - some were killed by their compatriots, some escaped, wives were involved - it was crazy and a really good read.  The point here is that, at this time, most mirrors were being BLOWN, just like you'd see hipsters doing with vases in a fancy glass workshop nowadays, and thus, they were super expensive and quite small.  All of the intrigue that led to the French mirror/glass industry resulted in someone figuring out how to pour/mold molten glass to make larger, less expensive options, and one of the first projects done with this new technique was the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles.

Voila!

Always good to start with a selfie

So, all of the mirrors face the windows,

the better to show off the gardens outside

I mean, just really

Apparently, only one of the mirrors is still original

to when they were installed,

but I don't know which one.  

It may have been on the audio tour.

We made our way out of the Hall and started toward the gardens, stopping for some quick photographs as other things caught our eyes:

I like this guy,

plus the wavy glass is cool

Peeping back out at the main courtyard

I like this shot, as the docent near the bottom right

gives you a sense of scale.

This place is massively tall in addition

to covering a wide footprint.

We finally made it outside, and got ready to tour the gardens!  The gardens are just as massive as the chateau itself - all totaled, there are 55 different pools/fountains, 15 different groves, 700 topiaries with 300,000 plants, 155 statues, and overall, the garden is 850 hectares, which is just over 2000 acres large.  It's big, you guys.  We took some shots overlooking the side garden (yup, this is not the main garden) while we planned our touring strategy.

As I mentioned, this is the "side" garden,

where they try experimental planting and whatnot.

This isn't even the main part.

We walked over to the ramp that would lead us into the main part of the garden, and what did we see?  A row of cute little golf carts, which we found out, you could rent and use to tour the garden!  New plan for the Olsen's!  

Here we go!

In addition to it just being plain fun to speed around in a golf cart (seriously, look at how excited Chris is in the picture above and we're just sitting there), it also came with a narrated audio track that would update and give you fun facts, depending on where you were on the grounds.  We had a great time.

There was a track you stuck to with the cart,

but you could park it almost anywhere you wanted

to get out and roam for a better look at the ponds/fountains/etc.

Heading down the water walk to the dragon fountain

Part of the Neptune fountain,

constructed with real shells

The Spring fountain -

look at those suckers, using their legs!

Fall colors starting to come in

Part of the Apollo fountain

Looking back toward the chateau

"Pfffftttt...I have a seagull on my head!"

Happy cormorant!

Behind this fountain, you can see the start of the Grand Canal.

In Louis XIV's time, they brought in

Venetian gondoliers to paddle guests up and down the canal.

Kind of obsessed with the Venetians, it seems.

When I originally read about the gardens, I figured we likely wouldn't get out to the Trianon areas, as they were a good few miles away from the main chateau/garden area.  However, with the golf cart, we reached them in just a few minutes of driving!  The Trinanons were closed, so we didn't tour them, but we found something even more important - the potato man!  I'd read about the La Parmentier guy, who sells amazingly topped baked potatoes, but his little stand moves around the gardens, and you're never sure where he'll be.  Thanks, golf cart!

A happy kiddo with her bugerders

Heading down the path

The Petit Trianon - Marie Antoinette used these areas a lot.

They also served as the king's escape from the chateau,

when he had too many people visiting

We may have become slightly obsessed with this red tree

Fellow golf carters

The Grand Trianon

Traffic jam, Versailles-style

Looking back at the Apollo fountain and Grand Canal

before returning our trusty steed

We dropped our ride back off, settled up with the golf cart shack and said adieu to the chateau and gardens, feeling slightly better about our early wake-up time when we saw how horrific the entrance line now was.  Since we'd already had first lunch (POTATOES!), we weren't starving, but it was time for a bit more food.  We wandered through the town of Versailles (a cute little place) and found another creperie, where we enjoyed more galettes and house wine this time instead of cider.  While it wasn't gourmet, it fully satisfied our hunger, and it was right around the corner from our next stop, Costumes and Chateaux.  

Okay, see, my family has a long-standing tradition of taking those "old-timey," sepia-toned photos.  My grandparents started it with my mom and uncles when they were growing up, Mom took some with us in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, and I made Chris do a set of the two of us near Cannery Row when we visited several years back.  When I found out there was a place near Versailles that did the same thing, but in Louis XIV-style, I was IN.  We made an appointment for 2pm, and the timing worked out perfectly.  The proprietor of the shop, whose name I have sadly forgotten, told me she made every costume in the place, and when they're not renting them out for the huge balls that happen every season at Versailles, they put them on tourists and charge for pictures.  Chris and I had the whole shop to ourselves, and we had such a blast getting fully kitted out and acting like snobby royals for an hour or so.

The results:

Not bad, non?

I plan to print these out and get them framed

(after cropping them and whatnot).

I just can't decide whether to do color

(like I said, the costumes are to die for)

or sepia/black and white...decisions!

We reluctantly changed back into our real clothes and headed back to the train station, in order to catch our ride back to Paris proper.  On the way, we grabbed a few more shots, of course:

The train station at Versailles

We believe this may have been designed

for a much smaller person than Chris.

The train ride back to the Marais was uneventful, and we made it to Les Tournelles with plenty of time to take a nap before getting ready for our evening excursion.  On the next blog, we head out on the town for the evening, taking an evening boat tour along the Seine, and getting a ton of blurry pictures (oh wait, you'll see)!

Later!

Amy