The next day we got up early and headed to Versailles. It was a three hour drive. We arrived around noon and stopped at a nearby restaurant for lunch. Lunch ended up being a wonderfully multi-cultural experience because one of the kids on the trip had a birthday that day. Of course we sang "Happy Birthday" in English, and then our teacher and the bus drivers sang a very raucous, fun Danish birthday song. Then, because we had just picked up our guide for Versailles and he was Swedish, we also got to hear a Swedish birthday song. And then we sang "Happy Birthday" in French. It was one of those many times when I remembered why being Europe is so awesome.
After lunch we headed over to Versailles. The first thing that struck me about it was the sheer number of tourist buses that were in the parking lot. I mean, it's not like it was the middle of summer, or something. It was mid-March. Who goes on vacation to France in mid-March? Quite a lot of people, apparently.
The palace of Versailles was built during the reign of Louis XIV, between 1664 and 1684, and the project nearly bankrupted France. Louis XIV didn't feel comfortable living in Paris, so he decided to move the seat of power outside the city. He took an already-existing hunting lodge that had belonged to Louis XIII and added a ton of stuff onto it. At the time it was the largest palace in the world, with around 700 rooms and 67 staircases. The gardens were huge as well, and the myriad fountains used up a horrifying amount of water- something like seven times as much water as the whole of Paris used at the time. In short, it managed to do what Louis had wanted, which was to impress the heck out of the rest of the world's royalty.
It's difficult to describe the palace of Versailles. It's also pretty hard to take pictures of it, actually, but I did my best and hopefully they'll give you some idea of what it was like.
The facade says "To all the glories of France". It was added after the Revolution of 1830, when the palace was turned into a museum celebrating great moments in French history.
Inside, it was ridiculously crowded- literally, wall-to-wall people. This made it very difficult to see things, and ever tougher to take pictures. Because of this, most of my pictures from inside are of the ceilings.
Fortunately, Versailles has some pretty awesome ceilings.
Apparently they were having a throne exhibit. I wish I had been able to actually see it. As the crowd whisked me by I managed to get a picture of this one, which belonged Tsar Nicholas II. All I can say it that he must have been even shorter than I had thought.
There he is. Louis XIV. That's all his own hair, you know.
The Hall of Mirrors.
The meeting room. Guess who got the only chair at the table.
Marie Antoinette's bed.
She's certainly looking sharp.
What a smoothly executed hairdo.
Sorry.
This modest little seat apparently belonged to Napoleon. You can tell because he put his initial on it so that people wouldn't mistake it for theirs and take it.
It was almost too bright and sunny for my camera to bear, which isn't the worst problem to have, but it's why a lot of my pictures of the gardens are a bit washed-out. Sorry.
The Orangerie. There are orange trees there during the summer. At least, there were during Louis XIV's reign. How do you grow orange trees in France, you ask? By the power of being king and having lots and lots of money.
Bassin de Latone (Latona Fountain)
As you probably know, Louis XIV was referred to as the "Sun King" ("Roi Soleil") and identified with Apollo. So there are a lot of cool Apollo-related things around Versailles, including this fountain, which features Apollo driving the sun chariot out of the sea in the east.
The Fountain of Enceladus.
A well-placed bird.
I would have been perfectly happy to spend the entire day wandering around the gardens and enjoying the sun, but unfortunately we didn't have time for that. We were given two hours in the gardens, then we got on the bus and headed toward Paris.
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