Château de Versailles
Trip Start
Unknown
1
72
109
Trip End
Ongoing
Paris, Île-de-France, France
Thursday, September 16, 2010
Okay so where do I begin . . . I have been many palaces around Europe - Vienna, Madrid and London and I had big expectation for this one but was overwhelmed by the sheer chaos and mayhem. There was no order and tour groups were everywhere you just couldn't escape them and for those of you who haven't had the joy of being around tour groups they are off in their own little world. Their tour guides talks through a mic and they have earphones on so they have no concept of what is going on around them and these palace rooms are so small and they just fill it. THEN when you could get through you were battling non-tour people like yourself for the best position as they allowed you to take photos (meant to be without flash but none of the staff enforced it, even in rooms that said no photography allowed they didn't stop people) so it was a constant dogfight. Such a surreal experience and I was also shocked to find there was graffiti on mirrors that were part of the Palace - you know the Jack loves Kylie bullshit. The Hall of Mirrors is quite stunning but just overcrowded with people to fully appreciate it's grandeur.
I was quite relieved to get outside and it was here that I started to really start to enjoy myself. The garden area was huge, I've googled it's size (as no real information was accessible, another annoying aspect) which stands at 800ha. There is a Grand Canal which is 23ha on its own and was absolutely stunning. By far this was the best part of the Palace Estate. There were ponds and lakes everywhere and beautiful, colourful flowers. Our ticket also gave us access to The Grand Trianon which had some more smaller, simpler rooms but because it wasn't crowded I actually enjoyed walking through. We also had access to Marie-Antoinette's estate which actually wasn't built for Marie-Antoinette but for the mistress of an earlier King but she died before it was completed. The main building was a little boring but did find the story of Marie-Antoinette interesting - she was from the Austrian royal family, she was the 15th of 16 children. She was married off to a French Royal to strengthen the link between the Austrian and French Empires. When he husband became King she spent most of her time spending money and enjoying the arts. She had the misfortune of being on the throne when the French people had enough. She was locked away with her husband Louis XVI by the French Revolution and when they tried to escape they were convicted for treason and both of them where executed by the guillotine in public in an area now called the Concorde.
So while the building was boring the garden area was really pretty. There were these old wooden houses, not sure what they were used for but they were just beautiful. You couldn't go in them, they looked way too fragile for tourists but they were surrounded by a lake that shimmered in the afternoon sun.
This was another long day of walking so at the night we took it easy. We had another great dinner and I had an even better Creme Brulee than the previous night. We then headed off to see the Moulin Rouge from the outside, neither of us were all that interested in seeing the show. I'd have much rather spend 100 euro on a night at the opera, either way we didn't have the money. We took a wrong turn getting there but found it eventually. It was okay looks better in the movie but that's not real.
Oh I forgot to mention that in the palace there was contemporary Japanese art in the palace rooms and it just did not go at all with it's surroundings and just made the whole palace experience that little bit more annoying. The art was good just not appropriate in a 400 year old palace in Paris.
Comments
Amazing place, i'll have to check it out. Too bad there are so many tourists around, they should ban them.
The gardens really are worth the trip and are free to enter I think, maybe not the Marie Antoinette ones. They just need a better system and some order, the staff really couldn't give a shit which was highlighted by the constant flashing of cameras and graffitti, Buckingham Palace I think cap how many tickets they sell in a day and I didn't see any tour groups makes such a difference.