Paris: May 20: Versailles

This day was finally our long-planned day to go to Versailles. After I ate a pastry breakfast at home, Di Yin and I assembled the picnic lunch to bring to Versailles and we were on our way.

I took a bunch of pictures this day. In fact, I took more pictures than Di Yin took. The latter link goes to her first picture from this day (picture #1 in this album). When you see a picture of Di Yin holding a book on a train (picture #76), you're done with her pictures for the day. I'll link to the next day's pictures in the following post.

However, we got on the wrong train! It took us a while to realize it because we were too engrossed looking out the windows watching the Parisian suburbs go by. They looked fairly English. We enjoyed the journey, though I wish we didn't have this lengthy (two hour) detour that wound around to the north-northwest of the city. Versailles is southwest.

Versailles is a grand royal palace, in the same vein as Hampton Court Palace, on a king-size estate. Because we arrived late, we decided to stroll around the gardens, have our picnic lunch, and only then later in the afternoon explore the palace itself.

The gardens are designed in a very regular, geometric pattern (the French style). Interestingly, Di Yin observed that the width of the paths in most of the gardens implied everything was meant to be carriage roads. Anyway, though the linear geometric pattern of this formal garden style appeals to me (and I think I could be a good designer of French gardens), I find I enjoy strolling and sitting in English gardens more.

I was disappointed that about half the groves I wanted to see (whether for their statues, their fountains, or their design) were closed. Furthermore, the fountains weren't running anywhere. I guess the grounds weren't yet in full force for the tourist high season.

Incidentally, many marble statues looked too new and clean, especially those outside. I assume they're reproductions of the original, though I suppose they could have just been cleaned excellently rather recently.

As for the palace, it was opulent and extravagant (as expected). It was built in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries under King Louis XIV, XV, and XVI. We took the audio guide tour through everything. The audio guide was good: interesting and paced well (except for the section on the Dauphin Apartments, but that was probably by necessity because there are fewer interesting things to say about them). Aside from the Dauphin Apartments, we listened to everything, which is quite something because Di Yin normally has little patience for audio guides.

Part of the palace houses the Museum of French History. The museum has many paintings done in the late seventeenth century when the museum was established. It's neat how a contemporary museum becomes a history museum.

In all, we spent 1:45 in the palace. After finishing the palace, we had some extra time so we walked the grounds a bit more. Despite this extra time, we had to skip visiting the palaces of Trianon as well as Marie-Antoinette's estate, all of which are attached to Versailles. Those palaces and grounds are a twenty-five-minute walk each way from the main palace; hence we couldn't squeeze them in despite having some extra time. We had simply lost too much time from our train mistake. Regardless, we decided we got a good feel of the grounds and palaces in Versailles; we didn't feel deprived.

We wandered through the town of Versailles on the way to the train station. It seemed like a nice town/suburb, quite wealthy.

We took the train home (no wrong trains this time), ate dinner at home, and met Di Yin's friend, K, who arrived in the evening to visit us for two days.