Versailles, France

When I spent a week in Paris with my dad and his girlfriend we took a half day trip to Versailles, and it was beautiful!

In the early years Versailles was a country lodge where Louis III went to hunt, later it expanded into a royal palace under Louis XIV. Versailles was the home for three generations of royal families, and each tried to out-do the previous to make the grounds more lavish and beautiful.

An original painting of what Versailles looked like

The Royal Gardens are beautiful, you can lose track of time wandering through all of the groves.

On Saturdays and Sundays from March to November they have fountain shows; which is reason enough for me to come back!

Raphaelle, our tour guide from the Louvre and D'Orsay, gave us a behind the scenes tour of the palace.

I loved the hallways and must admit I pondered what it was like to walk through them back in the day

We saw the Royal Chapel where the King would come and pray daily.

The Royal Opera House was STUNNING!! The opera house is made entirely of wood, which is deceiving because the wood is painted to look like marble.  There are beautiful seating boxes four stories high where the Kings and Queens would sit and enjoy music from up above. The seating below could be covered by a wooden floor, and the opera House could be turned into a ballroom for weddings and parties.

We went into the private apartments of King Louis XIV.

Above and beyond the art, the vastly gorgeous grounds, the architecture and the gardens are the clocks of Versailles.  My favorite clock (not on display to the general public) was the Passemant, and it is accurate to the year 10,000. The clock displays the date, time, phases of the moon, planetary motion, and the rising and setting of the sun.  The mechanisms must have been very hard to create, and I can imagine even harder to fix if broken! My horology loving husband would have loved this clock, sorry honey, it's too expensive for me to buy you!

The king lived a very public life, he even got dressed in front of the public. In his room he would have stools for people to watch him dress, and if you were lucky he would ask you to button his shirt.

We got to see Marie-Antoinette's room.  When the palace was being invaded by the hungry bourgeoisie during the French revolution Marie escaped through the door on the left into save herself from getting killed.  She never did let the hungry eat cake.

Our last stop in Versailles was the Hall of Mirrors. This expansive hall was a passageway for visitors to see the King in his apartments.  Because full-length mirrors were very rare back in the day, for some it was a once in a lifetime experience to check out their bodies from head to toe. 

Versailles was gorgeous, and better than I expected!  Be back soon!