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!
 

Escargot! :O

(Picture from Wikimedia)

So I forgot to post this, but I ATE A SNAIL.

It was... interesting. I was going to pass, but then I thought, how can I live in France for a year without trying an escargot? Anyways, not as gross as I thought it would be, but I can't say I get why people pay so much for them.

Chartres!

My dad LOVES European churches, and the Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Chartres is like the mother of them all. The Holy Grail, if you will. It indeed was the largest and most impressive cathedral I've ever seen!

The cathedral was built during the years 1193 to 1250, which is incredibly fast for this scale. The ceiling is over 120 feet high! The cathedral is really well-preserved, with most of the original stained glass windows and architecture. Right around when it was being built, the cathedral became a major pilgrimage destination because it has the Sancta Camisa, which is the veil Mary supposedly wore while giving birth to Jesus. After reading this in the guide, I was pretty interested in seeing this veil, but unfortunately they were doing restoration work on the area of the cathedral where it's usually on display, so it had been "mise en sécurité." What! I was pretty surprised they would put the cathedral's claim to fame into storage and not just move the display case. Oh well... The cathedral was amazing nonetheless!

I took a video because the cathedral was so big, I couldn't fit it into one photo.

Statues outside the doors 

Amazing stained glass!!!

The shiny white part where they're doing restoration work.

We also climbed up one of the towers and got an incredible view of the city of Chartres and the architecture up on the roof. So. Many. Stairs. I think I had to sit down at one point. Maybe two points. Somehow, I managed to take a few pictures despite being doubled over gasping for air.

À bientôt!

P.S. It was so warm today, I wore a t-shirt!!!!!!!!

Amboise!

Next stop: Amboise! Of the cities I've visited, Amboise is one of my favorites, even though we weren't there very long at all. It's a beautiful town on the Loire River, and I just really liked the ambiance when we were walking around downtown. There are a ton of little shops and quiet (but not completely deserted this time) pedestrian streets. Plus Leonardo da Vinci used to live there! :O

After coming back from Chenonceau and checking in to our hotel, we went downtown and walked around for a while. I bought some postcards, and we got crepes for dinner. The next morning, we decided to squeeze in the Château d'Amboise, where the king of France used to live until some crazy conspiracy happenings in the 1560's. In 1516, the king invited Leonardo da Vinci to come live in Clos Lucé, which is a manor connected to the castle by underground passageways. Da Vinci lived there for the last few years of his life and is buried in the Chapel Saint-Hubert, which is next to the castle. Allegedly buried anyways; there's some debate. (More conspiracies!)

The Château d'Amboise is smaller than Chenonceau, but just as pretty. We went so early the sun was still rising, and the lighting was breathtaking! The château is up on a hillside, and we spent a long time just looking out across the town and the river glowing in orange and pink light.

There's the château!

Gargoyles!

View from the château out across Amboise

Inside, the château is similar to Chenonceau, with the old furniture set up and lots of tapestries on the walls. More mentions of Leonardo da Vinci though; that's clearly its big claim to fame. We did a pretty quick tour because we had to drive to Chartres and then to Paris to drop off the car before 5 that day.

Leonardo da Vinci's tomb

Leo D. himself!

À bientôt!

Chenonceau!

Ohhhhhh man, I am getting a little behind on regaling you all with stories of my travels! But I currently have no more trips planned, so it's time to catch up. After touring Normandy, my dad and I headed to the Loire Valley - château country! Our first stop was the Château de Chenonceau, which was built in the early 1500's (and designed by architect Philibert DeLorme!). A lot of kings and queens and French nobility lived there over the years, but today it's a Monument Historique and open to the public. It's the second most-visited château in France after Versailles!

To get to the actual Château after buying your tickets (no, your Mont Saint-Michel ticket won't work here, Dad...), you walk down this long tree-lined path, and the castle slowly appears in the distance. Chenonceau is especially cool because it was built over the Cher River, so boats could come right up to it. The château is beautiful and has been really well restored/maintained. All the Christmas decorations were still up, and a lot of the fireplaces had fires going, so even though it was massive, it still felt almost kind of cozy.

There are roughly one billion rooms in the château, and you get a really good pamphlet with a map and some background about each room. I don't remember all the details, but plenty of courtly intrigue took place here! It seems like every room you go into was once the bedroom of some king or queen of France. During World War I, the château was used as a hospital, and you can see the main hall where soldiers were treated. 

Diane de Poitier's bedroom

Hall where soldiers were treated during World War I

The kitchen

One of the first straight (as opposed to spiral) staircases in France!

The Five Queens' Bedroom
(Queen Margot, Elisabeth of Valois,  Mary Queen of Scots, Elisabeth of Austria, and Louise of Lorraine)

One of many tapestries

View out from the château

There are also huge beautiful gardens you can walk through around the château, and past the gardens, the château is surrounded by woods. It definitely felt very castle-y, and again, there was almost no one else around! 

It was especially interesting to see Chenonceau and a little bit of the Loire because one of the books I read last semester, Le Lys dans la Vallée by Balzac, takes place in the Loire. Le Lys dans la Vallée was not exactly my favorite book ever, but my professors talked a lot about how inspired Balzac was by the Loire, so I wanted to see for myself. I was so lucky that my dad could come visit me and rent a car, since most châteaus are pretty tricky to get to by train/public transportation.

À bientôt!