A couple of days ago some friends from Albuquerque, NM arrived in Paris and will be spending a week here. This is great news for me since - 1) It is nice to see familiar faces and 2) I also get to speak to other people (in my language) longer than my usual just asking for directions in french - and I forget how nice it can be to have lengthy conversations.
So today, taking advantage of a beautiful day in Paris, we embarked on a trip to Chateau de Versailles. The train ride was roughly about 40 minutes but felt much shorter since we sat next to a couple of American men and we made conversation the entire way. Somehow the topics always came back to food - a fact they made mention they had done a lot of during their time here (not hard to believe) :)
I must confess I was not sure what to expect upon arriving in Versailles and although there was some construction going in the Chateau, I certainly was not prepared for the magnitude of the Palace. I guess when I hear the word Chateau, I undoubtedly envision a quaint, countryside, well preserved and manicured castle, but this was quite ostentatious at best. You could call it a McPalace :) -- I don't know if you will grasp the enormity of it from my pictures because with my camera it was extremely difficult to get a shot of the entire layout.
Walking the inside of the palace could not have felt more surreal as the rooms were extremely large and tall and exquisitely furnished. The detail was incredible. The pictures on the walls were significantly larger than we would post on our walls today, alluding to a certain amount of modesty of the time. Of course the walls are so large that pictures of that size were required to fill the space I assume -----and they were royalty.
Also as you may see in the pics of the fountains and gardens, the walk along these sites is quite extensive so don't let the pics fool you. It got extremely hot and we were unable to cover much ground, but doubt that one day is enough to do so anyway. I read the Palace has upwards of 200,000 trees, over 50 fountains and Lord knows how many flower beds along the entire landscape and one can easily be lost.
We ended the day having early dinner which included a very tasty pizza, salad and a glass of wine and the most amazing ice cream. There is definitely something to be said for their diary here, because everything deriving from milk is incredibly flavorful.
I'd forgotten how taxing it can be to walk or be out in the heat so we were all quite heat exposed and tired coming home. Tomorrow we see the Mona Lisa at last!!
p.s. I don't know why I get a kick of seeing Mexican restaurants here. I mean who would be your source for a good recommendation :)
Avec L'amour de Versailles
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