March 2, 2012 - Paris day 4

One last beautiful breakfast and then off to Versailles!  

Louie likes his gold

Versailles was built by Louie XIV in the 1600’s when he moved his court and government there.  It is so overly decadent I can’t even begin to explain.  Every room is covered with gold leafing, huge chandeliers, paintings, ceiling art, etc.  Every inch of room is covered with ornate, overly-gaudy decorations.  It certainly is an amazing display of wealth.  The rooms were overwhelming to go through, as your eyes couldn’t take in all the heavy decorations at once.  Two rooms that stuck out to me were the Hall of Mirrors and Louie XIV’s bedroom.  The Hall of Mirrors was a long hallway with 17 arched mirrors on the left side and 17 arched windows looking out to the gardens on the right side.  The results were beautiful how the light shone through the windows and bounced off the mirrors.

It did have some fantastic ceilings

Hall of Mirrors

King Louie XIV’s bedroom was completely gold.  He was known as “the Sun King” and his bedroom really showed that – the walls, ceiling, bedframe, bedsheets, and the whole room was covered in gold.  I think it must have given him a really bad headache to sleep in there.  Over-the-top ornateness and decadence. 

Bedroom.  Very matchy...

Gold overload

 Next we headed out to the gardens, which are more than 800 hectares large (1 hectare=2.47 acres).  It was a pretty cold day, and we were still exhausted from all our walking, so we decided to just meander around the grounds.  “Meander” here meaning, “get lost because Ashley wanted to be adventurous and not use a map.”  There were miles and miles of hedges for us to get lost in, and we had a great time trying to find our way out of them.  The gardens were constructed in the true style of the time – perfectly trimmed rectangle trees, straight paths, perfect circular ponds, and order in everything.  It must be the worst job to be a gardener there, “Ok Joe, we want you to give the trees a trim and make sure they’re all perfect rectangles.  You can start with this row right here, oh and this is probably all you’ll get to because this single row of trees is 18 miles long.  Get to it!”

  

                We sat and watched the swans (who are very brave creatures and basically came over to me and sat in my lap), meandered to a field of sheep (French sheep, mind), walked around the many ponds, and discussed the finer things in life, such as who would survive longest in a horror movie.

                Then it was time to be off and to head back to the train station.  After a quick stop to McDonald’s (don’t judge me.  And this McDonald’s was fancy – we got macrons) we hopped on the train.  We had a great time as we made throwing away our trash a challenge on the train.  When the train would stop at a station we’d race to get off the train and throw away our trash in a trashcan in the station and then run back on the train.  Paris is a lot like London – they apparently don’t believe in trashcans, water fountains, public restrooms, or thick milkshakes.  So because we didn’t have trashcans on the train we made up this game.  I’ve decided that they need to make some variation of this game to play at the Olympics.  It really gets the adrenaline pumping, especially when you run out in a station only to find that there are no trashcans close enough and have to run back on the train (still holding your shameful trash).  A guy sitting next to us was cracking up the whole time and when we finally got off at our final destination he thanked us for entertaining him.  That’s what Americans are good for, right?