Europe Day 4: Versaille

Just a small hunting lodge, eh?

This is long overdue but I thought I should finish it. Even if it is over a year later...

Today we completely wore ourselves out walking all through the palaces and gardens at Versailles. Sunburns, sore feet, and a head full of envy. This. Place. Is. INCREDIBLE. It's so decadent and so opulent. I'm not too surprised that the Revolution occurred. Of course, that's much too narrow-minded an idea of the French Revolution but maybe it gives you an idea. [I think Anna has developed a small obsession with this place. Since arriving home she has been reading books about it, and even watched Sophia Copoloa's Marie Antoinette twice in one week.]

We started our tour in the gardens. Here is a map I found online to give you an overview of what we mean by garden:

This is an epic garden people. Not for the faint of heart. We heard (by eavesdropping on an actual paying tour group) that in the day of Louis the XIV, it took 5000 gardeners to tend to the gardens...by day. Another 5,000 by night. The garden is broken up into different sections, many revolving around some type of fountain. We traipsed through each luckily having come on a day when they turned all the fountains on and piped opera music throughout. It made it that much more impressive. It takes 60 minutes to walk at an average pace from the back side of the main palace to the far end of the Grand Canal. Here is a link to an interactive map if you would like to explore, a little more thoroughly, the layout of the gardens and palace:

http://en.chateauversailles.fr/templates/versailles/map/MapMain.php

I would really like to grow arching
hedges in my garden one day.

This picture could be epic if I'd
ever take my photoshop class.

This is the Orangerie where if we
were just one week later we could have
attended a masquerade ball here.
Tears are falling from my eyes
that we missed that

Then we went over to the Grand Trianon and Marie Antoinette's estate. These were summer homes and/or homes for the kings' mistresses among other uses. They were meant to be more "private". This was a whole day endeavor and we still could have stayed longer if their was more time and our feet held out.  We walked maybe a million miles (pretty much from 9 to 4 we walked, with little sitting and resting). Then we toured the actual palace after all the garden touring. We completely wore ourselves out and after we made it back to Paris proper we found ourselves a place to eat (which was pretty late for us, around 8:30-9--on another note it doesn't get dark here until around 10. It's amazing) and began to plan Paris Day 2. More on that tomorrow.

The private chapel.

My future art gallery.

Hall of mirrors.

My other future art gallery.