the weather's supposed to get better tomorrow, but we trundled off to versailles today anyway. feet feeling pretty good. wore my chucks in case it rained. which it eventually did.
the above photo is part of the garden at versailles; it's by the squirrel, b/c i just totally dropped the ball on taking photos, and then i effed up and forgot to edit on the camera the ones i did take -- which, in a boneheaded move, i then deleted from the camera after importing, which i never do. so, i have hardly any photos from today, and the ones i do have suck.
anyway, the gardens stretch on seemingly for miles and are labyrinthine, though not an actual labyrinth. we took the train to the town of versailles -- not a long ride through neighborhoods of apartment buildings and then more suburban-looking villes, with lots of little houses stacked nearly on top of each other. along the tracks were little vegetable gardens in some places. once you land at the station, it's about a 5-to-10-minute stroll to the palace. we had our museum passes, but it didn't seem that crowded. probably b/c it was damn cloudy.
into the palace we went, trundling around the many chambers stuffed with paintings and the usual historical bric-a-brac. i was quite taken with all the different colors and textures of wallpaper -- deep green, ruby red, shiny gold, brazen purple, etc. there were portraits of louis xiv and all his peeps, not to mention subsequent royal types, like L16, the one who was married to marie antoinette and was famously executed and all that. and L15, the one who had madame de pompadour as a mistress. the doctor who ep "the girl in the fireplace" was about her -- at the end the doctor comes to see her again after reading her impassioned letter to him, but she's just died. he runs into the king, who's majorly bummed out, and his highness points out reinette's coffin being driven away from the palace. it was raining as her coffin-carriage left the palace; that was in april, not june, but the story (the real story, not the who one ... actually, i can't remember if he said anything about it in the ep) goes that the king commented on the weather being crappy. so i'm not the only one who notices such things.
anyway. but the real action was upstairs. first you go into the war room, and then you turn around, and there's the hall of mirrors. it's a riot of glass and gilt, and how. (and full of fucking tourists, but what can you do?) another squirrel shot:
here's another one with slightly fewer humans in it:
then we wandered off to see the king's bedchambers, quite impressive with the elaborate brocade bedding and curtains on the four-poster bed, topped with ostrich-feather clusters on the top of each corner. but i think i liked best that his bedroom was right next to his office. so he could just roll out of bed and do his thing. it's good to be the king. deb said he had an elaborate bedtime ritual involving hordes of people. in fact, it seems that the king and queen were surrounded by hordes of people at pretty much all times. doesn't sound like my kinda life, but i guess you'd get used to it.
or maybe that's why he had such a big backyard. not sure he could sneak off and hide in it, but it is definitely huge. it has all sorts of fountains, also gilded and elaborate. like this one (squirrel photo again):
it costs extra to go into the garden, but it was worth it. we had a little snack at one of the outdoor cafes and then wandered around. the sky grew darker, and the squirrel was cranky. she was put out b/c i kept asking the same question about the petit trianon being closed (b/c there are grand ones too, which were open, and that kept confusing me). i dunno how she expects me to retain anything when she attempts to stuff every available iota of my memory space with factoids about kings and regimes that are no doubt Very Important, but frankly not likely to be remembered by me. whatevs -- i liked the fountains, especially this one of titan's fall back to earth:
we stuck around for the big water show at the neptune fountain at the end of the day. it wasn't that pyrotechnic, but all the different jets of water spurting out of statue heads was pretty cool. you could see the king using it to impress chicks and visiting VIPs and stuff. here's a squirrel photo before the water went off:
and after the show started:
notice how cloudy and windy it is? yeah.
after the waterworks, that was it for versailles. we exited from a nearby gate and hiked back to the train station, nearly getting lost but making it back ok.
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