The Events of Friday, April 29, 2011

                Château de Versailles, or in English, the Palace of Versailles, is the most magnificent palace in all of Europe. Sometime in the late 1600’s, King Louis XIV grew tired of the hustle and bustle of Paris, so he built a palace ten miles west of Paris in a town called Versailles. The grandest of palaces, it was built at the cost of six months’ worth of the entire income of France. King Louis XIV loved the luxury life, and the palace suited him well. He was a renaissance man, a century after the renaissance, and the model king in Europe. His wealth came from wars that he fought to expand his borders. His monarchy was huge and, in those days, was practically the entire discovered world. The world was ruled by the sun and Louis XIV. Since he wanted complete power, he called himself the Sun King, and he considered himself a god. This “god” could do amazing things, including having a huge garden and orange trees in chilly France.

                When the sun king died, after ruling for 72 years, he was succeeded by Louis XV, his young great-grandson – he had outlived his son and grandson. Soon, the hustle and bustle that Louis XIV had moved away from in Paris moved to Versailles, so Louis XV built another, smaller palace in his gardens that he called the Trianon. And of course, every king needed a summer house, so he built one of those too, as an escape from an escape. While the nobility of France hid away in Versailles, the rest of France started to crumble around them. When Louis XV died, he was succeeded by Louis XVI, married to Marie Antoinette, a young girl from Vienna. Together they built a Petite Trianon as a quadruple escape. Marie Antoinette was romantic, and she longed for the simple life of a peasant. Not a working peasant, but one of those peasants who spent their days laughing, acting out plays, and dancing in the fields in spring. She built her own hamlet, where she, wearing a simple white cotton dress, spent the days dancing, singing, and tending her manicured gardens and perfumed sheep.

                However, revolution was looming in France. The rich grew extremely rich, but the poor grew even poorer. According to legend, in response to her starving people’s calls for bread, Marie Antoinette sneered, “Let them eat cake!” When Americans hear the word ‘cake’, we think of sweet fluffy goodness and birthday celebrations, but that’s not what she was referring to. Cake, in those days, was the burnt crusts peeled off the oven and fed only to cattle. Eventually, the palace would be stormed by revolutionaries. Marie Antoinette and her husband, Louis XVI, would be dragged out of the palace by the mob and carried off to jail before being executed with a guillotine a few months later. Legend has it that Marie Antoinette, “a lady to the end”, apologized to the executioner for stepping on his foot before being made “a foot shorter at the top”. Then French monarchy ended, and Versailles became a tourist attraction.

                It was to this tourist attraction more than three centuries later that we took a double-decker train to this morning. Our original plan had been to spend a leisurely morning at home, and then spend the afternoon in Versailles. Then, we looked at the weather broadcast and saw that it was forecast to rain in the afternoon. So, we started early, and took the train to Versailles. Upon arrival, we sent Daddy and Lindsey into the Tickets building to buy our tickets, while the rest of us sat outside.

                By the time they came out, our stomachs were rumbling for lunch. The maps had little picnic baskets for designated picnic areas, so we headed over to one with a view of the Swiss Lake. Munching on strong cheese and baguettes has become the norm in France. From our picnic stop, we had a nice view over manicured gardens, with all the bushes shaped like curly cues.

                After lunch, we started the Rick Steves’ Audio Tour that took us through the gardens. We were able to see tons of fountains, statues, urns, and manicured gardens. We were intrigued by something that we have seen a couple of times in Europe – manicured trees. Beautiful trees are cut into boxes. From above, they look like huge hedges.

                We also liked some bushes that were carved to look like characters out of Dr. Suess books. Our audio took us to the Trianon, but we chose not to enter because of an additional entrance fee. We also saw the exteriors of Summer House and the Petit Trianon. Once we exited the Petit Trianon’s grounds, we turned left and peered through the trees to see the Temple of Love. Louis XIV had a gazebo made of marble built with a statue of Cupid in the middle. Built for the royal lovers and any other lovers, the gardens around this temple were especially romantic.

                Walking on a bit more, we came upon Marie Antoinette’s hamlet, her last attempt to close herself off from the terrors of the outside world. It looked very adorable through the trees. We could see her house, a huge house that looked like a mountain chalet with a thatched roof. But inside, as we learned from our audio guide, there were velvet carpets and marble halls. At this point, our garden audio tour was over, so we walked back on a tree lined lane through the pastures.

                When we reached the Palace, we checked our umbrellas, and headed inside the magnificent palace of Versailles. Our palace audio tour took us first through the King’s wing, goggling first at the Royal Chapel. With marble columns stretching up to the ceiling with a painting of what was supposed to be God surrounded by angels, but was represented by Louis XIV surrounded by angels, it was clear to see that this was not built to worship God, but Louis XIV. It had only a small altar that we learned was only used for royal weddings. One of the most imposing features of the room was a huge pipe organ, surrounded by 24-karat gold leaf twirled into classical Baroque decorations.

                Then we followed the one-way tour around the king’s wing. First it took us to the Hercules Drawing Room, where the main banquets, balls and receptions were held. Then we swung through the Salon of Abundance and the Venus Room, the room for refreshments after a long evening of partying.

                Then we went through the Diana Room, the Mars Room, and the Mercury Room. These were the rooms for pool, the guard room, and the room where the ritual of Louis XIV rising in the morning took place. Louis distracted the other nobles with games, the most popular of which was gambling. His theory, the domestication of the nobility, distracted the nobles with the pleasures of courtly life, while he was free to run the government his way.

                Following the Mercury Room was the Apollo Room, also known as the throne room. He ruled from ten-foot-tall silver canopy throne on a raised platform placed in the center of the room. Passing through the War Room, we entered the Hall of Mirrors. Down the middle of the hall were tons of shimmering chandeliers. On one side of the room, there are windows overlooking the gardens below, with golden statues holding more chandeliers in between each window. The reason that there were so many sources of light was because light was the sign of status in those days. Only rich people could have a lot of windows and candles to properly light their rooms. On the other side of the hall were mirrors, not shiny one piece mirrors, but dirty mirror squares put together. The ceiling, as in every other room, had a beautiful painting, with shiny gold surrounding it all. It was really quite beautiful.

                From the Hall of Mirrors, we circled through the king’s bedroom and council rooms. I didn’t really find the king’s bed that exciting; it was rather small and dark. The only unusual thing in his bedroom, not counting the usual colorful ceilings, gold-covered walls and elaborate chandeliers, were the velvet chairs surrounding the king’s bed for his attendants to sit in as they watched the sun king sleep.

                Exiting the Hall of Mirrors, we entered the queen’s wing, starting with the peace room. Towards the end of his life, Louis XIV became tired of fighting wars and made peace with all the other nations of the world. Since he was so proud of himself, he dedicated a room of his palace to peace. The queen’s bedroom was more impressive than the king’s bedroom. The bed was large, and covered with happy colors: springy light pinks, greens and yellows. These colors also covered the walls and made the bright gold around the edges even more remarkable. Flowers covered the wall, along with paintings of all the queens that stayed here. We learned from our audio tour that this was only the summer decorations, but in the days of Marie Antoinette, the decorations would be changed to correlate with each season.

                Passing quickly through another room that was under renovation, we came to the Coronation Room. This room was kept as it was in the time of Napoleon. A copy of the canvas, The Coronation of Napoleon, covered one of the walls. We had seen the original of it in the Louvre on Thursday, and agreed with the audio guide that this one was of much poorer quality. Just as we entered the coronation room, an announcement came over the loud speaker. At first, we didn’t understand what it was saying, but, at last, we understood that we were to head to an emergency exit, because of some technical difficulties. That was okay, though, because our tour was done. We picked up our umbrellas and headed back to the train station. On the way, Lindsey bought an “I <3 Paris” shirt to commemorate our time in this wonderful city.

                Home again at last, we served up a dinner of ratatouille, a yummy French vegetable and squash mixture, spoonfuls of Nutella, and slices of bread. I don’t think anybody has ever had ratatouille with Nutella before. With heads chock full of history, we headed off to bed, ready to head off to Caen tomorrow.