What a great way to end a visit to France – a day at
Versailles. We have been blessed with great weather most days since we arrived
in France. I had been to Versailles before but this time I managed to see so much
more. It is a huge place and we were keen to see Marie Antoinette’s Estate as
well as having a good look at Chateau of Versailles.
The Chateau has been on UNESCO’s world heritage list for
30 years. It was originally Louis XIII’s hunting lodge before his son Louis XIV
transformed and expanded it. The three
French kings who lived there until the French Revolution added many improvements
to make it more beautiful.
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| Louis XIVs Chapel |
The ‘Hall of Mirrors” is one of the most popular rooms
to visit. When I was there in 2007 the Hall of Mirrors had recently been
restored and it is still magnificent. The gardens and grounds are also wonderful.
Where the lakes and ponds are now, was originally a smelly swamp. The whole
area is now beautifully landscaped with formal gardens and several lakes and
ponds. There are many walking paths around the estate and some take you through
wooded areas or you can walk along the formal garden areas.
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| In the "Hall of Mirrors" |
As it was a beautiful late summer day we decided to walk
and walk we did! We walked along one of the waterways and through a wooded area
across to Marie Antoinette’s Estate. Along the way we noticed people hiring
row-boats and canoes to take out on one of the larger lakes. There were also
some wonderful statues in some of the ponds.
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| A fabulous statue in one of the large ponds en-route to Marie Antoinette's Estate |
Marie Antoinette’s Estate is large and made up of
several homes and a farm. We visited both the Grand Trianon & the Petite
Trianon. Marie-Antoinette was Louis XVI’s wife. She loved her own estate where she could return to
the pleasures of simple, rural pursuits, away from the pomp and ceremony of
Versailles. Both homes are open and you can see through most of her apartments.
Her homes are very feminine and many of the rooms have soft colored furnishings.
However you also see rooms with bright pink and yellow furnishings.
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| A very 'pink' bedroom used by the Queen of Belgium |
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| A very different salon - very yellow, but lovely. |
While her
homes are not as sumptuous as the Chateau of Versailles, they are lovely and
decorated with beautiful paintings and other treasures. The garden surrounding
the Grand Trianon looked wonderful. The plants in were all blue and white
salvias, and they looked stunning. The gardens between the 2 houses were formal
gardens and were planted with a huge variety of summer annuals.
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| The beautiful garden at Marie Antoinette's Estate - blue & white salvias. |
We have some great memories of our visit to Paris and
Versailles:
§ MH
took on the task of getting us around the Paris Metro (subway) system and he
did a great job. Once you get the hang of it, it is a good system and very
efficient.
§ The
metro provided us with some interesting characters such as – people (we
presume) were begging. These people seemed to go from carriage to carriage
telling everyone (very loudly) their hard-luck tale then walking through each
carriage with a container asking for donations. The other characters we saw
were the buskers on the trains. These were a mixture of people playing the
accordion and singing to people playing the saxophone.
§ The
fabulous views from the top of the Arch de Triumph, the Eiffel Tower and from
Sacred Heart Basilica of Montmartre.
§ Walking
the streets of Paris – just through normal residential areas, finding local
markets and seeing how the locals live.
All in all a wonderful visit to France.
Next on the itinerary – Brugge, Belgium.
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