There are four parts to the Versailles experience and it all depends
on how much you want to pay and how far you're willing to walk. We
paid full price and walked all day, we saw it all, and I'm here to
tell you that the best thing is right at the end. I would not have
chosen to go to Versailles, but I'm glad Sumana suggested it as our
day trip.
There was a big gallery of paintings of French military victories,
from which I took this dyptich I call "Leonard's Two Moods":
There's a restaurant (a branch of Angelina, a famous Paris
hot-chocolate joint) in the main Château. Their croque monsieur was
the only bad food I ate between the time I got off the plane at De
Gaulle and the time I got back on the plane a week later. Generally
museum restaurants are not great, so not too surprising. However the
hot chocolate was excellent! And it's hard to beat the ambience; it
called to mind a Ken MacLeod quote about how "our children giggle and
eat ice-cream in the palaces of past rulers."
A lot of people call it a day after seeing the main chateau and a
bit of the gardens, but we pressed on! We took in the Grand Trianon,
the palace that Louis XIV had built to get away from it all. This
was the exact reason he'd had Versailles built, but when
you're the king, truly "getting away from it all" would require
delegating important decisions to someone else, and Louis XIV was
not the delegating type, so he brought "it all" with him wherever he
went. If he'd lived longer he would have probably built another
palace even further away.
While
you're over here you can check out the Petit Trianon, originally
built for Madame de Pompadour but later occupied by Marie
Antoinette, of unhelpful-suggestion fame. This is still more
informal, a little closer to something a modern person might be able
to live in. And if you're undeterred by the fact that it's now well
into the afternoon and you've been walking all day, you can step
outside the Petit Trianon into the Queen's Hamlet. And this is where it gets freaky.
There's a barn-type building with chickens and other farm animals.
There's a little pond with its own fairy-tale lighthouse.
There's a mill that doesn't do anything.
There are many other single-use buildings--a dairy, a "boudoir" whose only purpose seems to be to let Marie have a conversation in private, etc.
And it works! It's clearly fake, but the part of my brain that likes this sort of thing doesn't care. Even with tourists and kids running around, the Hamlet
is a nice relaxing place to be. There's something deeply appealing
about these tidy replicas of rural life. It reminds me of watching
Peter Jackson's Hobbiton. Sumana called it the "Pinterest mom" look.
In general we found the French attitude towards Marie Antoinette
confusing. The Versailles gift shop was full of kitsch indicating a
demand for the pomp and decadence of pre-revolutionary
France, and the doomed queen in particular. But most tourists, having gotten
within a mile of her really nice Minecraft base, were not
willing to walk out here, to what, in our opinion, is the highlight of the park.
So we asked a French friend about history's final judgement
on Marie Antoinette, and he thought about it a long time and said,
"Well... she wasn't French." 'Nuff said!
(2) Sun Jun 19 2016 16:39 Paris Pictures: Versailles:
I'm back with another Paris trip photoessay! This time we venture to
Château Versailles, a short train trip from Paris. Versailles is a
small commuter city whose major attraction is the residence (and occasional prison) of kings; sort of if
New Rochelle used to be the capital of the United States.
"Yeah, it's all on one chip, no big deal."
- Comments:
Posted by Yatima at Sun Jun 19 2016 17:59
"Marie Antoinette, of unhelpful-suggestion fame." This is some peak Leonard right here!"Pinterest mom", c'est moi.The Petit Trianon is also the site of my single favorite time-slip, super creepy and awesome: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moberly%E2%80%93Jourdain_incident
Posted by Brendan at Mon Jun 20 2016 14:34
I like this entry very much.