Versailles!

One of the most amazingly grotesque displays of wealth that I have ever seen!  It is beautiful and tasteful and tacky all at the same time.

Honestly, you’ve never seen so much gold.

It has been home to quite a few Louis’ and possibly the most famous of their wives – Marie-Antoinette.

The sheer size of the estate is mind blowing and the palaces and maze of gardens and fountains are amazing.

We got there nice and early – a good half an hour before the doors opened at 9am and already there was a huge line that had formed, but as people always do, they made the line go in a funny shape across the quadrangle and the guards had to move people into a large L shape so other people could walk around it.  Before the reshuffle, I had set out on an expedition to make sure we were in fact in the correct line and on my return people were everywhere…… so I, and I feel a little bit bad about this, but not so bad that I’m not going to tell you about it… I slipped into the line nearer the front and waved Felicity over.  At first she didn’t know why I was there, but she soon clicked and joined me saying “Oh, I forgot where we were in the line…..” But it all fell on deaf ears (or non English speaking ears) so phew!

Not sure whether you can see it or not, but that line goes all the way across the front of the palace, then all the way down the courtyard to the front gates – Ker-azy!

While we waited we tried to work out if this was a helmet or a muppet with his mouth open.  You be the judge.

And… .at 9.02am – we were in!

When you’ve got this much moola and you fancy yourself as a bit of a special looker, you’re bound to have a plethora of paintings/portraits and statues of yourself just scattered thusly about your home.

 They also love a chandelier!

Unbeknownst to me, there was an Angelina cafe set up in the palace and it would have ben remiss of us to just bypass it willy nilly.  So we downed a couple of cakes and then we were on our way.

We were listening to the audio and I had just walked through an empty room when the man on the audio said that this was a room where people would gather to meet and visit with one of the Louis, then I turned around to this… and gather they did!

Do you think somebody got the brief wrong on this one?

“He told me to put it on the east wall.”

“Yes, but inside the building!  Who’s going to see it there?  You may lose your head over this.”

There were amazing carpets and tapestries and art works in every room.

Statues depicting what the room was used for (I don’t know if this is true, but I thought this guy was probably in the music room playing his coconuts)

Then we moved out to the garden.  Check out the great day we got for it.  Not too hot, definitely not too cold – she was just right!

This man was designing this garden using a hand mulcher – is that a word?

We followed the maze of hedges down the garden

Passing some interesting statues – this one is telling the story of the man who tricked his lion and his friend said, “If you trick that lion it will come back to bite you on the bum….”

Tuesday’s are the busiest day at Versailles because they have live music and also a fountain light show at night.  We heard music as soon as we entered the garden and we were keen to find the first lot which according to our map was around the fountain (I can’t remember the name of it)  But when we got there – the fountain was dancing along to the music, but we couldn’t see any musicians….. until we did a bit of investigating.

Found them!

Then down to the smaller palaces and two Marie-Antoinette’s farm hamlet that she had built so she could pretend she was living with the commoners.  She even had people move in to the little houses.

Fliss’ version of Lady Di

Fliss’ other version of Lady Di

Some of the animals at the hamlet….. to be fair, it was a fairly hot day.

By the end of the day we felt like we’d seen every single inch of the palace and the gardens.  We were plumb tuckered out!