Versailles is brilliant

So... the second day in Paris... we took a little trip out to Versailles, home of everything wonderful. I'm a pretty big fan of the movie Marie Antoinette.. which takes place almost entirely at Versailles. I'm not so much a fan of the movie itself... as much as I am the way it looks on the screen. In any event... it was pretty amazing to see the palace itself. While not quite as huge as say... the Louvre, it's still pretty expansive. I would definitely have to recommend getting the audio tour guide... so you're not just looking at a bunch of French words, random elaborate fabrics, paintings, and sculptures.


Here's most of the front of Versailles from a distance. Started out a little bit cloudy... then the sky was beautiful for about 30 minutes... then it rained a bunch. Changing weather patterns are my favorite.


A little bit closer to the entrance now. There's a lot of gold around the entrance. I feel like there probably use to be a lot more, which is sort of ridiculous to think about. I think I'm going to try to bring back into style gold covered buildings... I feel like it's gonna work out.


This picture of the chapel inside Versailles is regrettably a bit off center... but when there's 20-30 people crowding around a roped off entrance trying to take pictures... it's difficult to get the best possible shot.


This hall had several statues. I have no idea how anyone could possibly have the patience, free time, or talent to take a giant block of rock... and turn into something so detailed. I mean.. I'm sure it's really easy...


Walking into this room was sort of like walking into a 3-dimensional piece of art. Well I guess it was exactly that actually... The edge of the ceiling is actually a 2-D painting made to look like a 3-dimensional ornate molding going all the way around. I had to do a double take... the attention to detail is astounding. O yeah... and there's an incredible giant painting hanging on the wall too... when did rooms like this go out of style? Or am I just not looking in the right places anymore?


One of the many insane paintings on the ceiling in Versailles. This one had a chandelier hanging out of the middle of it.. so I thought it would be a good idea to take a picture of it.


I think this bed was in the king's bedchamber... or something. I don't really think it looks terribly royal... spare the ornate gold trimming and the ridiculous sheets. I don't know who thought that a bed that is like 5 feet off the ground was a good idea... it's also a bit boxy for my taste... all that to say... I don't plan on being the king of France anytime soon... mainly because of this bed.


This is the Hall of Mirrors... which has a lot of significance that I can't exactly recall at the moment. That audio guide really made an impression on me apparently. Someone really needs to take some Windex to those mirrors though... that much I do remember.


Marie Antoinette escaped out of a hidden door in the wall to the left of that bed when the people of France decided that her extravagant lifestyle didn't really line up with their worldview anymore... and thus stormed Versailles. I think I read that in "The History of France: Paraphrased."


This gigantic hall has a painting commemorating every war victory in France's history. They didn't have a painting of any French Fries... I thought that was a pretty big victory for them getting the naming rights for that over the rest of the world... but whatever.


Outside of Versailles are some of the most brilliant gardens I've ever seen. This was also when the sky decided to clear up for a minute. This is also not at all a picture of the gardens...


This cattywhompus (which I just spelled correctly on the first try, thank you Urban Dictionary) picture is actually of some of the gardens outside Versailles. I apparently need to do a better job of lining things up on the screen before snapping a picture.


Here's some more of these gardens right outside Versailles. I wish I had a picture of the map of the gardens... I think you could probably spend days exploring all of this. It just goes on and on and on and on and on...


At this point several things took place, 1) the camera on my battery decided to start to die 2) clouds started to roll in 3) We decided to walk all around the man made lake in the gardens. It's a pretty good walk. But it's definitely worth it.


This is the last picture I took at Versailles since I needed to save some battery for the Normandy beaches. This is before we walked all around that water in the distance there. We also ate some lunch next to the water... that was fairly serene. Versailles probably ranks as one of my favorite things I've seen thus far on the trip... also taking top honors (in no particular order) the Louvre, BBC London, Eiffel Tower, and the train system in Barcelona.

Speaking of funny words like cattywhompus... which, contrary to what Firefox thinks, is spelled correctly.

Sheepish might be the most bizarre word I've come across in awhile. As I started to look for the origin of this ridiculous word... which, yes, I did... I found that it can't even be used to describe something that looks like a sheep... which is dumb. If you wanted to do that, you would say, "It looks sheep-like." Why can't I say it looks sheepish? I would apparently only be saying that is looks "embarrassed" or "meek." I like to think that the tag "-ish" can be added to almost any word to make it describe almost anything you want. Yeah... the picture looks level-ish... I think I feel hungry-ish.... This seems just a little -ish to me... ya know.. basically anything, right? Ok, maybe not... DONE (Linda, 2009)