The devil fools with the best laid plans. – Neil Young
Don’t go to Versailles on Friday, we said. Get to Versailles early, we said.
So naturally, we ended up at Versailles on a Friday and we got there at 1:30 pm.
The line to get into the Palace was eleventy billion miles long (once again Security is the bottleneck). So we thought we would be clever and go in through the gardens (free) and go straight to the Grand and Petite Trianons, come back through the gardens and then visit the palace when the line died down. Our plans were thwarted by the very thing we were hoping to avoid by NOT going to Versailles on Friday – the Musical Gardens and Fountain Show! They’re on Fridays are extra $$$. When your plans go awry, adapt and conquer! We paid to get in, visited the musical gardens first, then the Trianons and the Queen’s Hamlet and finally the Palace.
My thoughts on Versailles:
- Wow!
- The gardens are amazing. Mostly for sheer size as most of it isn’t formal. But, still. Louis had his own canal.
- How many gardeners does it take to maintain a garden of this size?
- Gold. Lots of gold. Gold is pretty.
- It’s good to be king.
- It’s good to be queen.
- In light of #s 5 and 6 above, why did the king and queen need a getaway from the Summer Palace which was a getaway from the Tuileries Palace in Paris? And why oh why did the Queen need a getaway Peasant Playground?
- Tons and tons of marble. Literally.
- Was Louis XIV egotistical or were all those sculptures of him scattered around merely to remind everyone he was the boss?
- André Le Nôtre was the master gardener architect de jour. Nicolas Fouquet hired him first for Vaux- le-Vicomte. Louis XIV hired him second. The gardens and park at Versailles are copies! I think that’s funny.
- Louis XIV did not have A/C or flushing toilets.
- My favorite garden is the Orangerie.
- My favorite fountain is the Dragon Fountain. We didn’t see it this time, but here’s my photo from 2011.
