A, D, Z, C, D...with Halley and Comet: Palais de Versaille and our last day in Paris (Thursday)

Thursday morning we got a fairly early (10ish?) start to the day as we had a big one planned.

It was particularly hard to get Dunc up. He was sleeping on so many levels!

We hopped the RER C to the end of the line deep in the 'burbs. I think Versailles is 20 or so km from the centre of Paris and it took 40 or 50 minutes to get there. Once we arrived it was a short walk to the palace itself.

The palace is quite an impressive sight. It really is huge. It seems to go on
forever. And there were more supporting structures like stables and things
behind us at this point.

Louis XIV, roi de France avec Zita, Duncan, et Clara.

And while the palace was huge, so too was the line to get into the palace. You
enter through the wing under the pillars on the left there. The line stretches
across across the front of the palace then turns sharp right down towards the
street out of the frame. And that's the wide angle lens...

We were used to seeing lines by this point in our trip and so of course had a plan in place. Taking our cue from Rick Steves again (!?), we hit the gardens first so as to come back to the palace later when the line had dwindled a bit. More on that clever plan later...

The garden was very impressive. Again, as with all the formal French gardens we saw, it was very symmetric, well manicured and ordered. I had to wiki-up on the whole French garden thing. The "jardin a la française" (garden in the French manner) is all about symmetry and imposing order on nature. Hence the ordered rows of hedges so dense you could bounce a ball off them, and with sharp corners you might measure with a carpenter's square. The epitome of this style is of course the Gardens of Versailles where we now found ourselves.

The upper garden area directly behind the palace. Lots of flowers in shaped beds
here with some minor shrubbery. The real goods don't start until you head
to the lower area.

Dunc and Clara wandering down the Allée de Bacchus
looking for the party. Also dusting the shrubbery with the
feathers they had found.

Allée de Bacchus!

Ahh. There's Bacchus.

The gardens are packed with statuary. For some reason Dunc found this one particularly entertaining!

Despite our early start (ha!) to the day, by the time we had begun our wanderings in the gardens we had become somewhat peckish. Thankfully there are a few informal outdoor restaurants and snack bars hidden in the midst of all the tall hedges. So we took advantage of one for some emporter and took our food to a convenient bench. While the others branched out somewhat I of course ate another ham and cheese on baguette. I must say it was clever of Louis to salt the gardens with a few places to eat and indulge in a pint or two as he wandered.

Clara checking out the resto offerings and gleefully finding the...

...pizza Clara! Of course she had no interest in eating it. As an aside, I was the only
one in the family that really appreciated the barely cooked egg on top of a pizza. As
another aside, we couldn't believe how pizza was such a mainstream offering in
France. Every other restaurant offers pizza as one of their main menu categories.
Clara appreciated it as she couldn't go wrong with ordering pretty much any
type of pizza but "without all the other stuff except cheese".

Perhaps Louis himself once sat here enjoying a can of Heineken with his
sandwich jambon et fromage.

Things like this reminded us all of those funny
hairdos people give their French poodles!

After lunch we continued to wander (did I mention the gardens were huge?) down towards the Grand Canal. We had plans to rent a golf cart, partly for some excitement and partly to get ourselves out to the far end of the garden which is quite a long walk. It turns out you can only use the golf carts on a limited number of paths and we wouldn't have been able to get where we wanted to go. Instead Zita and Clara and I rented a row boat to go out on the Canal.

View from out on the Grand Canal. Notice the looming clouds. The French
skies actually had the nerve to open up on us this time. I'd bet Louis' boat
had a top.

Motive power.

Laughing at the motive power.

There are fabulous fountains throughout the gardens as well. We did not see any of them spewing as they only run them on certain days. When they are running it's called the Grandes Eaux. Apparently even now the fountains take so much water to run that they are hard pressed to not tap into the city's water supply to keep up. Back in the palace's heyday one of the biggest challenges was to supply enough water for the fountains. When they were all running they consumed more water in a day than the entire city of Paris. The gardeners had a system of whistles to warn each other when the king was coming so that each fountain could be turned on before he arrived and off again when he wandered off.

Heading up towards the palace. I'm pretty sure each one of those golden statues
spews water. It must be quite something to see all the fountains running.

Looking back out over the garden with the Grand Canal in the distance.
Presumably the fountains visible from the palace were kept running
all the time.

More fountainy statuary on our way to the palace. Notice the continuing
presence of dark clouds? And the umbrella on the right?

So now back to Rick Steves' theory about waiting for the afternoon to go in the palace itself. His theory doesn't really hold when it starts to rain! When it rains, it appears as though most people in garden decide to go inside the palace. The line was longer than it had been in the morning.

Hamming it up at the main gates while waiting in line.

The main courtyard viewed from the gates.

Unfortunately we'd had such a good time in the garden that we'd left it late to visit the palace. That, coupled with time in the lineup meant we didn't get the leisurely visit inside that we'd hoped. Still, we saw a lot and it was very impressive. To keep Dunc interested while in line we'd been talking about how fancy the Queen's bedroom would be. We ran out of time to see the Queen's apartments but were largely saved from drama by the fact that they were closed for renovations anyway!

See below for various interior shots. I remember where some of them came from but not all.

Le Repas Chez Simon (I think).

Huge fireplace, though not the hugest we saw!

The king's receiving room. Maybe. I think.

Detail from The War Room (that one was easy!).

A very fancy ceiling. They all were.

The Hall of Mirrors. Unfortunately the photo does not do it justice.

The king's bedroom.

Of course we were accompanied by Chirp again,

After we were escorted from the palace (Dunc was caught jumping on Louis' bed)(just kidding, the place was closing), we decided to have dinner in Versailles rather than heading back to Paris right away. We wandered a bit and found what turned out to be an excellent French bistrot/steak house. The waiter was great and the food was too. Another aside: we have found that the service in restaurants (and other places) here has been very good. Everyone has been friendly and courteous and many of them speak fairly good to excellent English. No one has yet laughed at us as we struggle with French either.