Jun 01 2010

Honeymoon – Paris Day 6 – Versailles

Published by at 10:42 am under landscape,sketchbook,travel

Versailles! No wonder the French working classes decided to have a revolution.

In back of the palace are the amazing grounds, which extend basically forever.

Then there are the auxiliary palaces, for when you feel like living someplace slightly smaller, but still ridiculous. Alison was really charmed by the checkerboard coincidence of the marble floor and this Japanese woman’s socks.

Or favorite part of Versailles was the Hamlet of Marie Antoinette. It’s essentially fake (a provincial French farm town in miniature, where Marie could go to relax), but it is also absolutely gorgeous, especially after the ridiculous over-the-top pomp of the rest of Versailles.

The hamlet has pigs, goats, sheep, donkeys, geese, chickens, etc… plus a mill pond that is so overstocked with carp (?) that if you walk up near the water, they start swarming in hopes of food — and if you actually throw in any food, you are treated to a rather horrifying spectacle.

This was an awesome day, but it did have one downside — it was our worst food failure. We didn’t time anything right, and got stuck eating cheap prefab sandwiches for lunch and the worst “Mexican” food ever for supper (next to the train station at Versailles).

Judging by the coating of dust on my shoes when we got home, you might think we honeymooned in the Middle East rather than Paris.

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