Paris - Day Three

Another beautiful Parisian day dawned and this was the day we were going to visit Versailles, the site of the one of the most famous palaces in the world however not before a nutritious breakfast of croissants and chocolate pastry (again!). Versailles was the dream project of Louis XIV. He lived in the palace until his death in 1715, and then his son Louis XVI lived there with his extravagant wife Marie Antoinette until they had their heads chopped off in the Revolution –ouch!.

The size of the estate is quite massive, and consists of the main palace, huge gardens, Louis’s summer house and then Marie Antoinette’s own palace. The eye catching golden gates were originally made of pure golden leaves and were torn down during the revolution were only replaced in 2008 at the cost of £4 million pounds.

Having seen a few Royal Palaces in our time, we whipped through the palace itself relatively quickly, we were surprised that you could take photos of the interior of the palace as you couldn’t in other palaces we had been in. 

We made it out into the brilliant sunshine amongst the mean sculpture fountains and wandered through the gardens. The palace officials had installed hidden speakers in the hedges of the gardens that played French classical music so you really felt like you were in a movie, promenading about.

We found lunch at a little café hidden in a maze and lay on the grass and had another picnic. The gardens furthest away from the palace were open to the public and many French families had set up camp for the day with their lunches, scooters and bikes. We wandered off to the other half of the estate where Marie Antoinette’s apartments and Louis’s summer house were.

These were basically scaled down versions of the main palace and had their own pretty gardens. We kept walking and stumbled across this little model village called the Hameau which was where the farmers lived whose produce fed the many people in the surrounding palaces. This was a definite highlight of the day, the village had been restored to what it would have looked like in 1789, the houses had thatched roofs and enormous vegetable gardens (Dave you would have been blown away), a little pond with the biggest carp we had ever seen, and a little model farm with rabbits, pigs, sheep and goats. It even had its own vineyard! 

After this excitement, we were wandering around trying to find our way back, getting more and more tired and thinking that we were going to be lost in the gardens for ever, and they would find our half rotted skeletons in a hedge. But we eventually found our way out and made our way back to the train, utterly exhausted.

That night we decided to try one of the local bistros around our hotel and a really nice Italian meal and shuffled back to our bed with aching feet. 

Highlight: The little farm village at the Palace - you could actually imagine yourself living there, just gorgeous.  

Lowlight: The variety of rules that the security guards like to impose, sometimes Hamish wasn’t allowed a backpack and sometimes he was, bizarre. 

Interesting fact #1: The total cost of all renovations made to the palace over the last 400 years total approximately $US2 billion dollars. 

Interesting fact #2: Marie Antoinette never actually said “Let them eat cake”, but it still sounds cool if she did. 

Interesting fact #3: Before Versailles the French Royal family lived in another famous French build the Louvre which was tomorrows adventure.