06-01 Palace of Versailles

The Palace of Versailles is famous for two things: biggest palace in Europe and a peace treaty was signed here at the end of WWI.



It's not IN Paris. We took a 40 min train ride, a 10 min walk, and arrived at 9:30. Our 2-day Museum Pass allowed us to get right in.

It was built by King Louis XIV in the late 1600's and cost a lot (about $2 billion in today's money). Here's the king up on his high horse.



And here we are inside the golden gates of the palace.



We picked up the FREE audio guide and we proceeded on. Armed with Rick Steve's audio guide and theirs we were able to forget twice as much about the rooms in this museum. Thankfully we have pictures.

One room was unforgettable and that was the Hall of Mirrors (echo, echo, echo). They lined a a whole wall of this grand room and the other side had a view of the gardens outside. It was where I'd host MY parties.



Some rooms because of their small size were jammed with people; other rooms were grand and you were able to move around easily to take pictures.

Everyone liked Marie Antoinette's bedroom and the areas where the public was allowed to watch them. Karen says that because they were servants of the public that the public got to see what they did.





Another curiosity was that the public was allowed to view the birth of the next king. We have no pictures of this as proof.

The gardens are immense. It is a 20 min walk to get to another set of Summer/I-want-to-get-away-from-everyone houses. They were not nearly as ornate and evidently that's the way they wanted it. Everything you can see is just a part of the gardens.



The gardens were the most beautiful we had seen though. They were really well kept.



However why were the fountains turned off? Really? These should be a set - Gardens AND Fountains. To not have them on was a money grabbing oversight. See, they turn them on during the evenings on the weekends and charge you more to see them.



After our long slow walk out to the other houses and a couple of hours of looking around we decided to take the Little Train back to the main building. Good decision. We'd done a lot of walking today. That's the Summer Home that you see in the distance.



We left Versailles at 4:30 and headed back to Paris on the train and even though the train was almost full we found a seat. About 4 stops from home I realized that we would be passing the Orange Museum so I asked Karen if she wanted to stop. We had done a lot of walking today but I knew she wanted to see the Water Lilles and we could do it for free with our museum pass.

We got off and into the museum around 5:15 or so. Ho hum. I can do without impressionist painters. Come on. If you want to paint water lillies then paint them so that I know they are water lillies. Are we playing guessing games with our paints?

Karen like the natural lighting coming from the skylights. It was interesting to note that the paintings were huge and that the room was designed to house the 8 pieces of artwork.

We took the train home the rest of the way and had dinner at a cafe right outside our door. Karen saw raclette on someone's plate one night and wanted to have it again. I'll let her describe her experience.

I have Raclette and Pat has steak. Pat's steak doesn't look so good, very thin. I thought I would get a bowl of melted cheese and potatoes to dip on them. Not. I got a plate with six slices of cheese and two whole potatoes and a second plate with salami, pepperoni, ham, and tomatoes. And a long skinny metal tray on top of a warming dish. Sooo what do I do?? I don't know, I'll have to wing it. I put a slice of cheese on the tray and it starts to melt and sometimes I dip things on the tray and sometimes I scrap the melted cheese off on to my plate of food. Nobody told me I was doing it wrong or how to do it so I just enjoyed it.

Not thinking we had done enough today we went out at 9pm and headed for the Eiffel Tower to see "The Sparkle".

Millions of lights turn on and off on the tower for 5 min on the hour after dark. We looked around for a good place to take photos and videos. We got them at one place for one show them we moved and took them from another spot for the other show.



Karen's hand held shots were better than my timed shots on our little tripod thing. The camera didn't focus correctly on the tripod.

I did try some longer exposure shots and some of those turned out nicer.



We headed for the subway after the 11pm show - the end of a long day of touristing.