Today, we ventured to the Parisian suburbs to explore a relic of French royalty's decadent past, Versailles.
In order to get to the city of Versailles, you need to take a municipal train - the RER C - from downtown Paris (St-Michel) to Rive Gauche station, which takes about 30 minutes. Despite our early arrival, there was still a very long line up (over 45 minutes). While we waited, we applied our sunscreen and admired the gilded details of the exterior.
After checking our bags, we grabbed our map and started exploring. Versailles Palace was the centre of political power in France from 1682 to 1789, until the beginning of the French Revolution. Although extremely beautiful - almost saccharine - it is considered a symbol of absolute monarchy of the former political regime. The extravagant 2300-room palace and 1.6 km-long garden took 50,000 workers and over 50 years to complete.
Inside, we marvelled at the details of the State Apartments. Every surface was covered was covered in rich Rococo details - oil paintings and cherubs and gold everywhere.
One ceiling was currently under restoration - kind of interesting.
One of the most famed rooms is the Hall of Mirrors, the central gallery of the palace. True to Louis XIV's decadent style, the Hall of Mirrors was designed to reflect sunlight westward back into the garden to remind the visitors that this is Sun King's residence.
After about 1.5 hours inside, we checked out, grabbed our bag, and headed around the back towards the gardens.
TIP: Versailles is very isolated, and the food options are limited – and expensive. Bring a picnic, but just be prepared to check your bag before entering the palace. You can easily collect it when you're ready to eat.
After a nice light lunch, we started our tour of the Gardens of Versailles. As you'll see in the photos below, the goal of the landscape artist, Le Nôtre, was to create a French Eden. The garden occupies 800 hectares / 2000 acres, with 200,000 trees and 210,000 flowers planted annually. There are also 50 fountains and countless sculptures adorning the property.
The Grand Canal, the 1-mile waterway at western edge of the gardens, was designed in such a way that on St-Louis Day (August 25), the sun sets in perfect alignment with the canal.
One of the notable water features is the Apollo Fountain, a gilded lead sculpture depicting Apollo's chariot being pulled by four horses. It goes without saying that Apollo, the sun god, represents Louis XIV, the sun king. On weekend evenings, this is the site of Grand Eaux, a colossal waterworks show choreographed to music.
Unfortunately, we ran out of steam before we could check out the Grand Trianon, Petit Trianon or Marie Antoinette's estate. Something to see on our next visit.
After being outside for most of the day, we were pretty exhausted. We headed back to the city, did some more eating, a bit more walking, and called it a day. A pretty amazing day.
