Palace of Versailles

Well, it was a long day. Today was: the Palace of Versailles. We started off the morning by waking up at 7:30- earlier you get to Versailles, the better we hear. We left the apartment by 8:15 and decided, with the weather being nice, to walk to the station. A mile and a half later, we arrive to the station only to find the stop has been closed for repairs. We saw a bunch of tourists heading on a bus to transport them to a working stop, but with the bus packed, we decided to walk to the stop instead. Another mile and a half later, we get to the stop, buy tickets to Versailles and hop on the train. As the train is pulling away, we notice there are VERY few people aboard and ask another passenger if we were going the right way. He hoped so, and so did we, until we realized 7 stops later that this train in fact went to a different Versailles station on the opposite side of town. So- we hop off the train, wait another half hour for one o thead back to where we started, and arrive at the same station we had gotten on. It turns out- all of the stations in downtown Paris going to Versailles are under construction; and that bus we opted out on was taking passengers to the correct station towards the Palace. So- we get on the bus, pass the mile and half we had previously walked an hour and a half earlier, and end up on the opposite side of Paris. Needless to say, we finally got to Versaille at noon, only 4 hours after leaving our apartment!

But.... we made it! And Versailles was amazing. It is the most extravagant palace in the world. The entire palace is made of gold and marble, and if its not gold nor marble, then its a painting of the royal family by a famous artist. The building was just unbelievable, in terms of grandness and grande-ness. The Musee de Louvre in downtown Paris was once the royal palace until it was declared "too small", which is when Versailles was then built. We were able to explore maybe a quarter of the entire palace and it took us over an hour just to walk through!

In terms of architecture, Versailles was the first palace to be shaped as a "U" in order to protect an entry from the front and have a large private garden in the rear. The ornamentation is mostly evenly, symmetrically, thoughtfully placed windows surrounded by stone- just a lot of them and that makes up the exterior.

However, I feel like the best part of the Palace were the immense gardens in the rear. They were the perfect example of natural trying to be fake- the garden was like a sixteen year old girl growing up in Deerfield. The lands are scalped to perfection; with cut mazes, springing flowers, scalped ponds, grandiose fountains, and a large pond (almost lake) in which you can take a row boat ride with your sweetheart. It was a large, open garden, yet felt very peaceful at the same time. We walked about half of the gardens, and in the end calculated walking about five and a half miles worth of garden!

In the end, eight and a half miles of walking later, I am home in my apartment and ready to collapse. I hope all of you back at home are ending a great week and starting an even better weekend! Miss you all SO much; please keep in touch!