The Palace of Versailles

We kind of stumbled upon the Palace of Verasilles on Saturday.  Our plan for the day was to go to Chartres Cathedral, a medieval cathedral about an hour outside of Paris.  We wanted an inexpensive and non-Paris adventure, and the tour books and websites we consulted guaranteed this.  Chris did some research and figured out the train to get there and what to do in the area aside from the cathedral itself.  We took the RER by our house to the big train station in Versailles, where we needed to catch the train to Chartres.  When we went to buy train tickets to Chartres, we were shocked to find out that round-trip tickets for 2 on this commuter train were €56 (roughly $75).  Since we weren't particularly excited about this specific cathedral (it just sounded like a nice adventure for a Saturday), we decided to scrap that idea and head to the Palace of Versailles for the day instead since we were only about a 10 minute walk away.  Rough choice, I know.

I am not a history buff, and I had planned to do some research on French History and all of the Louis' prior to visiting the Palace, but that obviously didn't happen.  Aside from seeing pictures of the Palace and seeing it in movies, I wasn't really sure what to expect.  It's hard to describe the magnitude of the Palace, but it is enormous.  We learned that in it's prime, the palace was like a big city, home to 10,000 people.  No wonder it's so big.

Entering the Palace

After touring the main area of the palace (with the hall of mirrors, king and queen's chambers, cathedral, etc), we went into the Apartments where some of the daughters of Louis XV lived.  The U-shaped building is comprised of two symmetrical apartments with a total of 10 rooms, that escalate from biggest to smallest as you go in towards the center of the U.  Each side of the apartment had two antechambers (basically big rooms for entertaining visitors), a drawing (music) room, a bed chamber, and a study.  This was probably our favorite part of the tour, it was less crowded and we got to see more of how the families actually lived. They didn't live very private lives, as there were dozens of lesser nobles to witness, and actively participate in, their waking in the morning, and tucking-in at night. Each room of the apartments were used to host events every day, with the more interior ones being restricted to higher ranking guests, while anyone could enter the 1st antechamber.

Marie Antoinette's Interior (Bed) Chamber

Chris in the Hall of Mirrors

Organ in the music chamber of Madame Adelaide's apartment (the greyhounds on top mean it is an organ for women).

We didn't check out the gardens during this visit - it was rainy, and we'll be back with a picnic next time.  We did eat some crepes and hit up the local market where we bought mussels, wine, veggies, and bread for dinner.