Château de Versailles (Palace of Versailles), home of the royal family of France just before the revolution, it is an hour’s train ride from Paris and we were prepared with tickets purchase online but unfortunately we were not prepared…
…FOR THIS!!! Omg, the line snaked through the whole courtyard, amd this is the line for people WITH tickets!! Everyone, including the hundreds of tour groups all line up in this one huge line to get in.
Gaaah!! Finally reached the golden gates to go in, yay! Only.took us like ONE HOUR.
Courtyard is luxuriously decorated with statues and gold plated everything, as you would expect from a palace.
I thought the Spanish Royal Palace was opulent, but come on! Gold lined roofs? Why do you even need that!?
Every inch of the courtyard is spectacular.
Entering the palace, you’ll first get to see the chapel of Versailles, you can see the organ in the back.
A great painting showing the grounds of the Versailles.
Painting of Marie Antoinette and her children.
Portraits of many French people. You probably can tell by now the French royal family was quite in love with themselves. 😂
Ugh, sea of people.
Brilliant ceiling paintings just like Roman Catholic churches.
Back then people didn’t have instagram so instead of selfies, they just commission sculptors amd artists to make sculptures/draw portraits of themselves. “Photoshopped”, of course. 😂
Luxurious artworks depicting heroic victories at battles, etc.
The galerie des glaces (Hall of Mirrors), amazing room decorated with mirrors and ceiling paintings and chandeliers, absolutely gorgeous.
Hall of mirrors looks out to the gardens which we’ll visit later.
The queen’s bed chamber. According to the audio guide, these bed chambers were used for receiving guests instead of actually sleeping. What a waste of such a grand luxurious bed. 😕
The Prince’s Staircase, there’s nothing gilded in gold here but you an still see the intricate carvings of artworks on the walls and ceilings.
The Galerie des Batailles (Hall of the Battles), it’s basically paintings of the French army beating the sh*t out of the Turks, Spaniards, English, Dutch, Austrians, Russians… etc.
Look at the Spaniards grovelling at the French king, actually I don’t even remember which country was grovelling and which French king this was. 😂
Lunch break at the “classy” (ie. expensive) restaurant in Versailles and had French onion soup! You know why I love this onion soup, because 80% is cheese, you get like 3 spoonfuls of soup, lol.
Onwards, to the chambers of the King’s daughters, or the “madame”.
Each madame had their own of apartments, which is a set of chambers with different purposes. This is obviously a reading room.
Each madame had their favourite colour schemes and patterns too.
This madame was a musician, you can see her organ just on the side.
Painting of my goddess Athena.
The insides of the Versailles is extremely crowded, nearly as bad as the Vatican, heaps of tour groups and people who don’t know what they’re doing, so you really have to be patient (although I know it’s hard being patient with SOME PEOPLE). It’s worst on the first floor in the beginning, nut gets better on the second floor. Anyway time to head out to the Jardins du château de Versailles (Versailles Gardens)! For us, we bought a full passport, which means access to the palace, gardens and the trianon. If you have a full passport, do not line up to go the gardens! The long line should only be for buying the ticket to the gardens, if you don’t have the full passport, then GG, more lining up for you! On certain days of the week, they turn on the fountains in the gardens at set times so the tickets are more expensive. When buying the tickets, they’ll also have notices which tells you which days have high occupancy so you’ll know if it’ll be crowded that day.
The palace from the outside. The outside is nowhere as grand as the inside IMO.
The VAST gardens, I mean, like HUGE. The grounds are so big I think it’d take days to fully explore the gardens. It’s not even a garden anymore, it’s like the size of a small suburb! 😂
Most of the bigger fountains are Roman gods themed, so the is Venus or something, can’t remember.
These tall hedges make me think of Maze Runner for some reason. 😂
The Apollo fountain.
How do the French make their trees line up so nicely?
About a 30mins walk from the palace is the Grand Trianon and Petit Trianonwhich was built as a retreat to live in away from the court.
It’s less grandiose than the palace, but still elegant.
Is this the French equivalent of the Mahjong room? 😂
The marble pavilion.
Is this ome of those bedrooms which are for entertainment instead of sleeping? 😂
Suddenly, yellow.
A little chapel at the end or the building.
The gardens are big here too, but not as meticulously designed as the one in the palace.
The French and their square trees and square bushes, haha.
Headed back to the palace gardens for the musical fountains. TURN ON ALL THE FOUNTAINS!!!
Yussss~ Looks so much better turned on. 😂
Whee~~~ WATER!! ⛲🎶
Dragon spewing out water.
Then just before closimg time, everyone gathers at the Neptune’s fountain…
…for the big finale!! 👏👏👏
To be honest, don’t expect too much from the fountains, the just… spray water, no lighting effects or fireworks. 😂 They have great background music accompaniment though! 🎶🎶🎶
Around ½ of The World in 80 Days 