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Tuesday, October 25, 2005

How the Royals lived

» Posted by Jon at 8:16 pm :: Comments (1)

If you like it, just build yourself one.

Day 5: Thursday

The Palace of Versailles was the order of the day, one of the last things mostly covered by our museum pass that we wanted to hit.

First thing, we signed up for the private tour of the king's apartments, which is in the only way you get to see the opera house.

While the guidebooks hint at doing this early, since tours sell out, this wasn't the height of the summer tourist season. In retrospect, we think doing the public stuff we could get to ourselves first may have been a wiser course of action.

In any case, it was part house tour, part history lesson. Our guide seemed enthralled with the French monarchy and Royal Court of the late 18th century. Probably a prerequisite for the job, but he seemed more than professionally interested. We hypothesize that he has some royal blood.

Out in the gardens, we strolled down to the canal, Louis' re-creation of Venice (no buildings but who are we to quibble with the Sun King). He even imported gondoliers.

After lunch in a garden cafeteria (we had pizza, somewhat in honor of the whole Venice theme) we walked out to the summer/country house wing of the Grand and Petit Trianons and the summer house and finally the Queen's Hamlet (which really is a constructed rural village, completely for the amusement of Marie Anionette). It is about the point that you realize how competely out of touch the royal family was with the French people who were contemplating revolution.

We finished with the public's tour of the state apartments, taking the self-guided route, eschewing the audioguides in favor of our guide books. Sadly, the Hall of Mirrors is being renovated until 2006 or so.

On the train ride back, you get a nice view of the Statue of Liberty model the French made for themselves, after deciding they like their gift to America so much.

The suburban train that takes you out to Versailles has a station practically under the Musee D'Orsay, so we decided to make another stop there and spend a bit more time in a few places.

After that, we took a walk over the river back to the Place de la Concorde for some night shots of the obelisk, le Tour Eiffel in the background and other things you might see along the Seine.

We headed back toward the hotel for dinner and apparently wound up at a neighborhood steakhouse. Even sat next to a birthday party. Not entirely sure how many bottles of wine it took, but they did attempt to sing "Happy Birthday" in English after a stirring French rendition.

We combo-ed soup (l'onion) and salad, then had dessert (profitteroles and a coffee ice cream parfait with some crispiness added). Very tasty, and, as usual, very tired.

» Filed under: Paris, Photolog

Comments

At first I thought you were sending a picture of your new back lawn. Sorry you missed the Hall of Mirrors. When I was there the mirrors and windows were all smudgy with finger prints. I was there in August and all the caretakers were on vacation.
Nice pictures!

» Posted by: Mom and Dad on Wednesday, October 26, 2005 at 10:07 pm

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