On Wednesday, we left early for a day trip to the Palace of Versailles. This was probably my 2nd favorite of our week! It took us about 2 hours to drive there & then we had a guided tour for the inside of the palace. I took a ton of notes & when I make our photo book, I will probably add all of the details to it, but I'll try to keep it brief here! Basically, Louis XIV became king when he was 4 years old but he didn't start ruling until he was 23. He used to leave Paris & escape to his hunting lodge to get away. He was so paranoid someone was trying to kill him, that he decided to turn his hunting lodge into his permanent residence. It took him 49 years to build it & he only got to fully enjoy it finished for about 5 years before he died. The entire palace is surrounded by a huge wall & gate & was built up high so he could reign over the rest of the city:
Like I said, the first hour of our tour was guided & that's when I took all of the notes because it was so interesting! We started in the Royal Chapel, which is the highest point of the palace & all of Versailles because the king has to be the closest to God. Apparently, this is the last part of the palace to be built:
I can't describe the detail in the architecture - the walls & floors made of marble, the statues, the painted ceilings, the art - it is unbelievable! From here we walked to the Hercules Room:
Every room served a purpose & the name of the room was chosen based on the painting on the ceiling. For instance, the Hercules room was used as a reception hall where you would have welcome drinks. From there you move to the Venus room. That is literally green velvet wallpaper that they would hang during the winter to help keep it warm & then take down during the summer:
The Dianna room, the Mars room:
I can't remember which room is which, except for this one because it is the king's bedroom:
I think this is the war room, which they used to intimidate their guests. The ceiling literally shows France throwing lightening bolts at the other countries:
Which leads us to the most famous room in the palace - the hall of mirrors!
It was long & narrow, lined with mirrors on one side & windows on the other side overlooking the gardens with multiple chandeliers hanging down:
Kind of ironic that on one side of the hall of mirrors is the war room & on the other side is the peace room, which is also known as the queen's music room. The paintings in here show France offering peace to the other countries via an olive branch:
Of course this room is next door to the queen's bedroom. Yep, that king & queen have their own bedrooms:
Check out this small, secret door - can you see it? It's so she can sneak down over to the king when he wants her:
And that's the palace! I probably wrote more than you wanted to hear, but it was truly fascinating. King Louis was so paranoid everyone was trying to kill him, that he just kept his staff busy & had parties all the time.
Before we left, we ate lunch in the palace at the famous Angelina's & my mom shopped in the store. I guess our tour wore Bryan out because while were in the gift shop, he took a nap:
Not a big deal, I have pictures of him sleeping everywhere, but this was literally on the floor, downstairs right by Laduree, the bathrooms & the gift store. I mean there were people everywhere! My dad even saw someone walk by & take a picture of him. Ha!
I was so excited about the next part, but to be honest, I was a little disappointed. I have always heard about the gardens but they did not live up to the hype. It is beautiful & it is a lot of land set up high, so you did have really good views but I was hoping to see more flowers. We saw wildflowers right when we walked out, but they were full of weeds. This would not pass at my house!
I did not bring a hat on this trip because we commuted so much & were inside so much but I was panicking when we walked outside so thankfully my mom had an umbrella!
This is a better example of what the gardens looked like - mostly greenery & ponds, which were pretty, just not what I was expecting:
And it was so big, there was no way we could have walked it all. You could rent a golf cart, but there was a long line or you could ride a little train, so we did that instead.
And that was our day in Versailles! Originally our tour was supposed to take us back to our hotel, but since it was still early enough in the afternoon & beautiful weather, we asked for them to drop us off in the city so we could explore some more. My mom kept talking about Montmartre, which is a large hill on the right bank. It had the best views of Paris! We went to visit the Sacre-Coeur chapel at the top, along with every other tourist. It was beautiful but really crowded up there:
We toured the chapel & they were actually having mass while we were there but we couldn't take any pictures inside. There are locks all over the city and I had always heard about the lock bridge, but there were a ton of locks up here:
It was the cutest area with live music, cafes, shopping, art vendors - so much to see & do!
Another random thought, but it looks like there are beautiful greenery & flowers everywhere in Paris, but most of them are fake! I was so surprised every time I saw fake foliage. My mom & my sister really wanted to buy a piece of art & they both did here:
Eventually we were hungry & we found a restaurant close by, but we didn't realize we had to go back down to it. Otherwise, we would have spent more time on the hill. We quickly realized it was a very large staircase so the 3 of us younger ones walked while my mom & dad took the tram:
It was worth the trip down because they enjoyed dinner. I couldn't eat here but I picked up some gf crepes around the corner & brought them back:
As we walked back to the subway, we caught one last view of the cathedral & this time we noticed a cute carousel in front. Sophie would have loved that!
And here we are commuting again. I had to take a few pictures here & there to show that we really did spend a lot of time underground:
Only one more post to go for our last day in Paris!
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