Versailles!

The Château de Versailles is pretty much everything you could ever imagine a palace to be. Plus more gold. And more marble. Not many people could pull it off, but Louis XIV totally owned it. The Château de Versailles was built by said King Louis XIV, who moved the French court there in 1682. He wanted to solidify his power by moving his headquarters away from Paris, where there was too much possible unrest. He also used Versailles to keep tabs on nobles and cut them off from gaining too much power by requiring them to spend a certain amount of time at Versailles every year. Woo, European History coming back to me!


Louis XIV wanted an imposing symbol of the power of absolute monarchy, and he got one! The palace is gigantic: 67,000 square meters (that's over 721,000 square feet) with 67 staircases. You can check Wikipedia for a list of more outrageous features. Plus it's on an enormous piece of land, with 800 hectares of gardens (that's almost 2,000 acres). So I'd read about how big Versailles was, but nothing you can imagine comes close to seeing the scale in person.

SO MUCH MARBLE

Audio guides were included with our tickets, which was cool because they give you a good historical background about each room and point out features of the architecture and decoration. It was so cool walking through all the former meeting rooms and bedrooms of French kings. Everything is ridiculously ornate. There is gold everywhere and whole rooms where all the walls are solid marble. My dad kept saying he wished he could take just one little panel to make a nice kitchen counter.

The palace chapel

The Hall of Mirrors! Where the Treaty of Versailles was signed!!

Marie Antoinette's bedroom

Goldgoldgoldgoldgold

The palace as seen from the gardens

This is kind of what my backyard looks like too.

Fountain in the gardens

Grand Trianon

Adding to the ridiculous grandeur of all this, the main palace is not even the only one on the grounds; there's also the Grand Trianon, which is a whole other palace Louis XIV built for his family to get away from the court. You know you have a big estate when it contains your regular house and your vacation house. There's also Petit Trianon, which Louis XV built, and where Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette hung out later. And there's the Hameau de la Reine, which is like a miniature quaint little peasant village that Marie-Antoinette had built so she could play in it. (Apparently making a personal amusement park based on the average French citizen's lifestyle was not her most popular move.) These bonus palaces did not seem that far away on the map, but man were we wrong! I nearly collapsed on the walk back.

Petit Trianon

Hameau de la Reine

But it turns out that long walk back was worth it because we walked out of the gates of Versailles and into a café where I had the best crepes I've ever had in my life ever. If I close my eyes, I can still taste them!!!

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. OMG. We both got le menu, which was a savory crepe, a dessert crepe, and a glass of cider. I want to hop on a train back to Versailles and get another one just thinking about it!!!

NOMNOMNOMNOMNOMNOMNOMNOMNOMNOMNOMNOM

So that was Versailles! If you ever go to Paris, definitely check out Versailles, and most definitely check out the crepe place on the street to the left when you walk out the gates! À bientôt!