Chateau Versailles

Today we took a train out to the Palace of Versailles. Doug and I were laughing because we both had the picture that it was out in the country in the middle of nowhere. It's not. It's still in the city. With the gardens being so big it is on the edge of the city, but still. Not what we were thinking of. But when is it ever how it is in our minds?

We were really impressed with the palace's exterior. It was huge!







Inside was kind of less than we had expected. Mainly because the tour was only through about a sixth of the palace, and because of the French Revolution, most of the original furniture was gone. The decor, paintings, and crown moldings were amazing. Absolutely stunning. And it was cool to see the lay out of the apartments of Louis XIV and the door where Marie-Antoinette escaped in 1789.

The Chapel that Louis XIV built




Amazing molding, painting, etc.!


The ceilings!






Hall of Mirrors! Loved this room! So pretty and majestic! I hope God has a throne room like this (but it'll be 1000 better)







We especially enjoyed the gardens. It would have taken about 5 hours just to walk through the gardens. It took a half hour just to walk to Marie Antoinette's estate. We enjoyed the lake there and ate crepes. I had a chocolate one and Doug had a nutella one. They were recommended to us by our American friends, but I didn't really care for them. It was like a warm thicker tortilla with chocolate sauce. I'll stick to pastries :) We laid in the grass for a while too and just relaxed for a bit. Fish came to eat some of our crepes, which Doug fed them. When we went towards Marie Antoinette's estate we stumbled on a little village that reminded me both of Disneyland's fantasy land and Belle's village in Beauty and the Beast. Loved it.











































One thing that was always hard in school was history classes that only worked from one angle. I mean, there's european history and there's American history, but you only ever cover what's going on in one part of the world and get that whole timeline. I like putting them together. Like we were talking about how we found it interesting that America declared its independence before France did. Maybe the french got the idea from us since it was only a few years after our war ended.

We were at Versailles for about 4.5 hours. We ran out of time really, but our legs were so tired that we were okay with leaving. We saw a dark rain cloud rolling in and got caught in it right as we made it back to the metro station. Then it started pouring. We were dry, but it'd been a while since I'd seen rain come down that hard. I loved it.

We took the metro back, which took about a half hour, and then got some chocolate mousse and a baguette from the grocery store. We were both pretty tired so we went to bed rather early.