17th: Versailles

Friday morning, we got up and caught a train out to Versailles. Versailles started out as a royal hunting ground for Louis XIII. He built a small hunting lodge there so that he could stay overnight when he went hunting. He would usually take his son, Louis XIV with him, who later turned the lodge into the royal palace, and moved the royal family from Paris, the capital, to Versailles. It is widely believed that a large part of the reason Louis XIV had Versailles built was out of jealousy of Nicolas Fouquet and his chateau, Vaux le Vicomte. Louis claimed that the Nicolas, who was the financial minister, could not have built this chateau unless he had been embezzling money from the crown. So, Fouquet was arrested, given a “trial” (it was really just for show), and sentenced to banishment from France. Louis wasn’t happy with this sentence, so he changed it to life in prison. After Nicolas was out of the way, Louis employed the same architect and landscaper that had done Vaux to build Versailles. The royal family only lived at Versailles for a few generations, from Louis XIV to Louis XVI. During Louis XVI’s reign, the Parisian citizens became more and more angry with Louis, and especially his wife, Marie Antoinette. Near the beginnings of the French Revolution, mobs swarmed Versailles and removed the royal family by force. Both Louis and Marie Antoinette were later sentenced to death, and Versailles was no longer used as a palace. However, it was kept in decent shape throughout the Revolution and the years after, allowing it to become the popular tourist attraction that it is today.
When we got out to the palace, we met up with our tour guide, Sid. He was quite an eccentric man with a braided rat tail. He was a pretty good guide though. When we finally entered the palace, it was incredible. There is so much attention to every little detail. It was beautiful. Our tour guide walked us through the rooms, giving us a brief history of each. The royal apartments were really interesting. Sid showed us the door in Marie Antoinette’s bedroom that she used to escape when the palace was stormed. Actually, almost all of the bedrooms had doors that were painted or covered in some way to blend in with the wall. I had never realized that before, but I guess it was a pretty common thing. We also learned that in the royal chapel, when services were happening, everyone in attendance had to stand facing away from the priest because the King sat on a higher level in the back, and everyone had to face the King when he was in the room. So when services were happening, the only people facing the front of the chapel would be the royal family. It was really fortunate that we got to go to Versailles right now, because they’re working on restorations, so we got to see how the palace looks now, and a little bit of how it will look in a few years. Most of the restorations that were completed were redoing the gold leafing on the roof, and redoing the whole front gate. The goal is to make the palace look the way it did before the Revolution. I’d like to come back in a few years to see how it looks.
After walking through the palace, which actually seems much smaller on the inside, we went out to the gardens. When you walk out the back doors and see the gardens, they seem to extend forever. There are flowers and carefully cut trees and shrubberies everywhere. There are a ton of fountains! Unfortunately they weren’t operating, because they only operate on Saturdays and Sundays to cut back on water usage and cost. They were still really pretty though. We walked down through the main gardens, then stopped for lunch near a part called ‘Little Venice’. It’s a big pond referred to as the canal, and you can rent boats to row around on it like riding through Venice. We only had about 45 minutes for lunch, so we just picked a spot on the grass and started eating. We had all packed stuff so that we didn’t have to spend a bunch of money on the food at Versailles. It was a really good experience to sit down and enjoy lunch in the gardens of one of the most famous palaces in the world.
After lunch, Sid walked us out to the rest of the grounds, which include all of the little houses (some of them really aren’t that little) that had been built for the queens and kings to use for privacy (and occasional affairs). The farthest he walked us out was to Marie Antoinette’s little village outside of the gardens. She had been from the countryside and didn’t really enjoy the socialite life at Versailles, so she requested a small country like village be built for her personal use. It literally looked like a fairy tale. None of the buildings are fit for touring, so you can’t go in them, but just looking at them was incredible. It felt like you were in a little princess Barbie land. It was amazing. Sid left us there, and we all went our own ways. After taking some pictures, I started walking back to the palace (about a mile) with Caroline, Nancy, and Michelle. I wasn’t feeling too well, so I didn’t want to linger very long. Caroline and Nancy stopped halfway to meet with Darrin, and Michelle and I continued on to the palace and the train station. When we were almost back to the palace, it started to rain a little bit, so we tried to hurry to the train station. We used Darrin’s directions and were able to get ourselves back to Paris. When we got there, we walked by the bakery near our hotel to see if they had any sandwiches, but they didn’t so we just continued home. Michelle was going shopping, so we split at the corner, and I went to the hotel. It kind of sucked, because I spent the rest of the day in bed, but Versailles made for a really great half-day!