palace of versailles

Versailles isn't too far outside of Paris so the drive there wasn't bad at all.  Flo got tickets for us to see the Palace of Versailles which is the royal château.  Versailles was just a small village when the palace was built, but today it's  a city of its own.  I believe Marie Antoinette among other royals lived here.  The royal family lived here until they were forced to live in Paris in 1789.  To us, it seems kind of weird to be forced to live in Paris - like that's bad?  Paris is gorgeous.  But after seeing Versailles, we can see why the royals preferred it.

 Almost there!

 The extravagant entrance.

 Alright, let's go inside.

 The ceiling.

 Room of mirrors.  I think it was a ballroom.

 The view out of the window... insane.

 This was someone's bed. 

And yet another lavish bed. 

One thing we noticed was that there were spectacular bedrooms, apartments, and ballrooms - but we didn't see a single bathroom during the tour. Apparently, there were no functioning toilets until 1768. Even then - there were only 9 toilets to be shared among the hundreds of people living there. The smell in the palace was considered "unique" out of all the palaces. I imagine before there were toilets, you just shouted at your servant and they would probably bring a little pan for you. These pans were then emptied out of the window (even though it was forbidden).  Thank God for modern day plumbing!

 One of the mannnny paintings in the palace.

Napoleon's statue was a little shorter than the others.  This is why he's usually pictured on a horse ;-)  Apparently he had short man's syndrome.

About to enter the gardens!!!  The palace was mind blowing, but all of us tourists were packed in there like sardines and the air was stuffy.  I was excited to get outside.  I almost always prefer nature over elaborate buildings.  I appreciate them, but I'd rather be outside!  Especially in Versailles --- where the gardens are world renowned and cover 800 hectares of land.  It was so massive that I'm doing a seperate post on the gardens.