A bit of a sleep in and made a few phone calls as everyone getting dressed! So good to hear everyone’s voices – you all sounded so close. It was a great start to the day! On the agenda today was to visit the Chateau of Versailles. Versailles is about 20 km from the centre of Paris and is, I suppose, a suburb of Paris. Once we hit the RER train there was a sign with train and entry tickets in a deal. We did this – again the children are free entry to the Chateau and only needed train tickets – Bonus!
As we arrived at the Chateau there was a huge queue for tickets – but – we were straight in as we already had them!! It was great because you got a self guided MP3 tour as part of our tickets. As you got to each room you put in the number and you got the commentary.
What a magnificent place – it is the grandest and most famous chateau in France. It served as the Kingdom’s political capital and seat of royal court for over a century 1682- 1789, that was the year that Revolutionary mobs massacred the palace guard and dragged Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette back to Paris where they eventually had their heads lopped off!
It was built by Louis XVI (the Sun King) it is huge and the décor reflects his taste for profligate luxury and his boundless appetite for self glorification.
We wandered through the Grand Appartement du Roi (King’s Suite), Hall of Mirrors,
Queen’s appartements and many other rooms of which I don’t know their purpose. Many rooms of course were blocked off to the public – would love to have been able to see the rest.Queen Elizabeth has had meetings and stayed here on occasions so is still used for important events.
Inside the Chateau was an art exhibition – 1 piece in nearly every room – Jeff Koons, had never heard of him but some of you up with it in the art world might have. It was such a contradiction and looked very out of place but I figure for him to get to exhibit here he must be big! He had a blown up lobster swimming inflatable and a very white Michael Jackson and Bubbles, to a bright metallic balloon dog. Very strange!
Once we completed the inside we headed off to the Gardens – humungous! We headed off down to the Grand Canal – grand indeed! We hired a row boat and I played at being Queen for the day and the others rowed me around the lake – just pristine, have seen this in movies and always thought ‘how romantic’ unfortunately the kifds were with us but magical all the same. I was terrified however we might end up wet and in the drink – as often is seen in these same movies. Hermione delighted in terrifying me by standing up and changing weight on each foot so as to ‘rock the boat’.
We didn’t however get to all the buildings or even half the gardens – Nev has promised me we will return – not sure when but probably on our own, so I guess he is talking about when we have Zimmer frames!
Back to Place d Clichy for tea. Found a store from the chain of ‘Hippopotamus’ which specialises in steak – the French are huge meat eaters, here they had amazing steaks some of which were €80!
More phone calls home before I finally retired for the night. To be able to talk to people has been one of the highlights of the trip.
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