Off With Her Head! (The Palace of Versailles)

The Palace of Versailles.

I don't even know where to start.

This place...

I found out we were to visit Versailles during our 2nd day in Paris and I had no idea what Versailles was. I knew it had something to do with Marie Antoinette, but I wasn't sure if it was a city or a castle or a chateau or a palace or what. Clearly I hadn't done much research on French history. So when our little mini-van pulled around the corner and parked to the side of this giant (and I mean GIANT) castle, I about shat my pantaloons. Shat is the royal version of shit, correct? 

Really look at this painting. Click on it to make it larger and really study it for a minute. The palace is enormous. The land is gargantuan. The gardens go back further than you can even see. And what is so cool to me is that the large majority of it is still standing today.

Time stopped for a minute. I've never seen anything like it.

I'm starting to understand why a place like this could have started a revolution by people who basically hadn't a coin to their name. If I was starving to death, my kids were dying of malnutrition, my farm was withering and my house was falling apart, I'd be pissed off too if this was being built right down the street. It's a good thing none of today's leaders live such an unbelievable extravagant life without any regards to the hardships of those less fortunate... right?

Anyway, back when then entire royal court was based here, this palace housed all the courtiers, government employees and of course the royal family. The actual town of Versailles is about 13 miles outside of Paris. When King Louis XVI didn't trust anything Parisian and desperately wanted his royal entourage out of the Louvre Palace, this land was the perfect escape from constantly being in the middle of political drama. Although there was a small chateau already there when he took over, he is the one who was mostly responsible for the original expansion which made it the massive palace that it is today.

I've never seen a line so long. These people had been waiting hours upon hours to catch a glimpse, and there were thousands of them!

Luckily, my cousin purchased us all "skip the line" tickets and we entered through a side door in under 5 minutes of our parking. We did the same later in our trip to get to the top of the Eiffel Tower. I highly, highly, highly recommend doing this for anyone who visits the main attractions of Paris. It is so well worth the money to not waste your precious time standing around like a heard of cattle.

Here I am. Skipping the line.

Check out the gate we had to walk around. It's an exact replica of the gate which was destroyed during the French Revolution. 87 yards, 100,000 solid gold leaves, hand crafted masks of Apollo, the King's golden intertwined letter L's, and $8 million later... It's a sight that will almost blind you. One of the most extravagant things I've ever laid eyes on.

The detail on the outside of the building doesn't fail to impress either. Not that you'd think it would.

 The first thing I noticed once inside was that every square inch of this place is covered in something. Either gold, marble, or some original mind blowing piece of artwork. Most people wouldn't even be able to afford a fabric swatch of the things that are decadently decorating this whole excessive mansion from ceiling to floor. It's intense.

I completely fell in love with the marble checkerboard floors. They stretch down seemingly endless corridors and really show off the majesty of all things royal. I could probably live there, you know, if I was absolutely forced to.

One of the first rooms we saw was the royal chapel. This is the place the family came for Sunday Catholic Mass and also where all the weddings took place. This includes the ceremony of King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette with whom I'm now completely obsessed. 

By obsessed, I mean I've gone to the library and checked out every PBS documentary I could find on Ms. Antoinette and the Palace of Versailles. She lived such an flashy life that ended with such an unfortunate tragedy, it's hard to not be at least some what curious about her. Her bedroom was as elegant as I hoped it would be and I totally want to recreate that bed! (My husband says absolutely not...)

I found out later that the marriage bed was open to the public because producing an heir to the thrown was imperative to the continuation of the monarchy. Therefore, everything done in that bed was to be documented. Marie Antoinette even gave birth before a live studio audience of over 200 people.  Everything she ever did was a public affair, including her beheading by guillotine at the Place De La Concorde in 1792.

The King's bed, right down the hall from Marie's, was just as lavishly decorated. The whole string of bedrooms, including those of the children and mistresses were called the grand apartments.

My favorite place in the palace, possibly in the whole world, was the very famous Hall of Mirrors. It is by far the most grandiose room I have ever stepped foot inside.  357 mirrors, 17 glass doors, 17 arch windows, 43 massive crystal chandeliers, marble walls, solid gold trim and mural painted ceilings. The vaulted windows over look miles of finely landscaped garden which are reflected in the mirrors behind them. The hall connects all the grand apartments. It is the most beautiful place in the universe.

The designer of the garden placed the royal pools purposely to reflect off the mirrors in the hallway during mid-day to give extra natural sunlight. Pretty smart thinking!

And speaking of gardens...

This collective estate as a whole is the largest palace in the entire world ringing in at just over 19,200 total acres which is more than the city of Paris and New York City combined. The gardens alone are over 250 acres with 2,400 waterworks including fountains.  We were there for 2 hours.

 2 hours!

There just wasn't even enough time to take it all in. Our little crew split off into groups so everyone could make sure to see everything they came to see and I immediately went off on my own to the mammoth staircase leading me down to the impeccably manicured lawns, ornate statues and fancy ponds. I could have stayed there forever.

There are 11 main statues in the gardens all of which depict scenes from Roman and Greek mythology. I don't know much about mythology but now I feel like I need to learn and then fly back to check it all out again. Any excuse works for me...

I loved Apollo's Bath Grove. I couldn't get a great picture of it because the sun and I were rivals the entire time I was outside. But if you look inside this giant rock, every tiny little cave has a statue in front of it and there is a swimming hole at the bottom on the right.

In fact, all of the pools left me pretty awestruck. They were so enormous and so beautiful but they smelled so bad like rotten fish. I desperately wished I would have packed a nose plug so I could have enjoyed the fountains and pools a bit more. Everything was just so gorgeous and it was sometimes hard to stand and admire when all I wanted to do was barf and wipe the water streaming out of my eyes.

Opulent and stunning but I'd die before stepping into that water.

To try and understand the enormity of these pools, compare them to the tiny people in the background of this next picture. They look like little ants in front of those perfectly sculpted hedges.

And there you have a few sample pictures from my short trip to the Chateau de Versailles. There wasn't enough time to see Marie Antoinette's private village or walk around the grand canal, but I found out you can rent bicycles,  paddle boats and horses to get yourself around a bit quicker.

Although I didn't get the intimate tour, I got enough of a taste to fall madly in love, stink or no stink.

I am forever changed...

...and grateful!!

Next stop: Claude Monet's house!

Les Ponts De Paris

The Seine is the main river through Paris and it has an insane amount of history running through it. The ashes of Joan of Arc after the burning at the stake in 1431, the memory of 1900 Summer Olympic rowing, swimming and water polo events, and even bloodshed from Allied troops during the close of the Battle of Normandy. There are 37 absolutely gorgeous bridges that cross it and I was lucky enough to catch a view of a handful of them.

The Pont Du Carrousel is named after the Place Du Carrousel which is the name of the courtyard of the Louvre Museum. The word "carrousel"  comes from a type of military training and this bridge was used for that purpose by Louis XVI. It's an arch bridge which is completely different than the suspension bridges that were mostly being built during that time.

The mayor of Paris started building beaches in the Summertime for all the local to enjoy. They're only here for a couple of months and each of the beaches has evening concerts, kayak access and swimming pools suspended over the river.

This version of the Pont Des Invalides was rebuilt right before the World's Fair in 1855. The gold statues at the top of the end pillars and the military coat of arms in the middle is amazing to see.

The Pont Alexandre III is considered the most beautiful bridge in Paris by most everybody. It is absolutely the most extravagant and ornate and connects the Champs-Élysées quarter and the Invalides and Eiffel Tower quarter. This bridge was built to show off to the world how awesome and magnificent Paris was to everyone at the 1900 World's Fair. I've never seen anything like it in my life. The golden winged horses, the lamps, the view of the Grand Palais and the solid gold domed Les Invalides is extraordinary.

Here's me looking at all the extraordinary...

The view of the Eiffel Tower from the middle of the bridge is like an unreal post card. I couldn't even believe I was standing there.

 The Pont de l'Alma is a suspension bridge inaugurated by Napoleon in 1856. Although it has military themed statues on all sides, it is mainly used by locals as a gauge of the water level on the Seine. Very pretty nonetheless.

This bridge also turns into the  Pont de l'Alma tunnel where Princess Diana died in a car crash in 1997. There is a replica of our Statue of Liberty's flame at the north end of the bridge. It was originally a thank you from the United States to the French business men who paid for the restoration of our statue's flame back in 1989 but since Princess Diana's death it has become the unofficial memorial for her. The eternal flame sits just down the block from her actual place of impact.

The Pont Des Arts is the bridge connecting the Institut de France and the courtyard of the Louvre Museum.  Under the first empire, the Lourve was named the Palace of the Arts, which is where the bridge originally got its name. It used to be used for art exhibits and a unique point of view for painters and photographers of the city.  

Yes, but now there is a new fad. Tourist couples from all over the world have taken up the act of writing the names of each other on padlocks, snapping the lock shut forever on the rungs of the bridge and then throwing the key into the river as a symbol of everlasting and eternal love. Paris police don't really know how to handle the new tradition and they patrol the bridge to keep "pollution" out of the water but judging from the amount of metal attached to this bridge, they haven't had much with a solution.

Before I left for Paris, my little family put some love on our own lock. Kalynn wrote her name, Jason wrote all of our initials, I drew some hearts and Miss Guacamole gave it a big sloppy kiss. Eternal love for sure.

It was really special to me that I was included on leaving my personal mark during my short stay in this gorgeous city. Even the Paris police weren't going to stop me.

 So now that I know much more history of the Seine River, the bridges across it and the love and pain that surrounds it, I'm completely honored to forever be a part of it. Whether the Parisians like it or not.

 So there.

The Arc De Triomphe

OK, so you see the "Come fall in love with Paris" advertisement on the back of the city bus?

Yes.

 Well, I did.

 This was my very first view of the town. Our hotel, Le Meridien Etoile, was literally down the street from where this picture was taken. So upon stepping out and turning the corner after a quick espresso, this was what I saw.

And I almost choked on the thick French air. 

It was absolutely enormous. 

But it was absolutely stunning.

The Arc De Triomphe was ordered in 1806 by French Emperor Napoleon after the Grande Armee had conquered most of Europe and was considered pretty much unstoppable. The thought process behind the construction of this building was that Napoleon's soldiers would have a monumental, dignified and elegant arch to walk through after returning back from another triumphant conquest.

 "You will return home through archs of triumph"

It's cost was 9.3 million French francs and at the time, that was an unfathomable amount of cash. 

The Arc sits directly in the middle of Place de l’Étoile which is basically a traffic circle like you've never seen in your life. It is the crossway of 12 major streets with no yield signs, no traffic lights, no stop signs, not even any lines painted on the cement to tell you which lane you're in. Our hotel was just a few short blocks away down the Avenue des Champs-Élysées, so no matter where we spent the day, we always had to risk our lives in a taxi on the way home. I swear to God I saw my life flash before my eyes at least a dozen times. Imagine French taxi drivers as the stereotypical temperamental New Yorker taxi drivers except on crack and steroids. It is absolutely intense.  

Anyway, so clearly it's against the law for pedestrians to cross the street. There are underground tunnels for tourist and locals to get to and from, but if you can imagine the foot traffic around such an epic piece of history, the tunnels are just as...um... for lack of a better phrase, just as much of a clusterfuck as the auto-circle.

The tunnel is full of photographs and information about the Arc De Triomphe. It's one of the top 5 most used pedestrian tunnels in all of Paris. It is also the entrance line if you want to climb the stairs to the top. So you can only imagine the amount of people stinking up this place. It's beautiful, it's informational, it smells like a locker room.

Signs are everywhere to beware of pick pockets.

It takes over 300 steps in this spiral staircase to get to the top so your legs feel like water and you're incredibly dizzy once you finally get up there. There is an elevator but, come on! Suck it up! It's something you'll never get to do again in your life!

This totally cracks me up. Once you get to the top, you step around the corner to this statue. I'm sure it's supposed to be a French warrior about to kill the enemy in the line of patriotic duty, but it looks to me like he's completely offended by a loud French fart. The look on his face is just hysterical to anyone with a juvenile sense of humor like mine. It's worth the ride to the top just to see his flared nostrils.

Of course there are other views as well...

I guess these will have to do. (!!!!)

On a clear day you can even see The Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Paris, locally referred to as the  Sacré-Cœur Basilica. The Basilica is located on the highest point in Paris which is a summit called Montmartre. There have been dozens of famous artists with studios on the Montmartre such as Salvador Dalí, Claude Monet, Pablo Picasso and Vincent van Gogh. You know, no big deal.

You can squish the Eiffel Tower from up there too. 

Back down at the bottom you have a great view of the belly of the Arc De Triomphe. Engraved on the inside and at the top of the arch are all of the names of the generals whom fought mainly during the Nepoleonic wars. 

There are 4 main sculptures on all sides of the legs of the monument all depicting different scenes from 4 different artists. 

Many countries have a "tomb of the unknown soldier" and France is no exception, There is an eternal flame ahead of the tomb as well as a ceremony held here every November 11th to pay homage to these unknown remains from World War 1.

The tomb reads "Here lies a French soldier who died for the fatherland 1914–1918"

Seeing the Arc De Triomphe in person was extreme. It was the first part of history that I was able to visit on my vacation and one that I'll never forget.  I can't believe that one city can be just as beautiful as it is beautifully historical.