Salut
This is a bit of a long one – so you may want to get a cup of tea.
No sooner was I back from Oz when I went with a group of Australians to Versailles for a couple of days. Even after all these centuries, the Palace is still incredible in its scale, lavishness and beauty. The gardens were looking bit bare after the harsh winter but you could see the beginnings of shoots on many of the trees. (Here’s a fun fact – when the gardens were being built and it was decided which type of trees would be planted, the spotters were sent out to find trees of the right variety and size and just dug them up. So you could wake up one morning to the sound of your prized birch tree being removed from the front garden.)
During winter months, the gardens offer free entry for visitors. There are plenty of places for picnics, riding bikes and just walking or going for a run. But in summer months they charge entry. I guess they have to make some money somehow to pay the army of gardeners it takes to look after the grounds.
Here’s a couple of outside pics
And then there is the inside. There is so much to see and learn about. The cost of building the Palace and the egotistical whims of the royalty who lived there are just as fascinating as the building itself. The statistics are eye-watering – 700 rooms, 67 staircases, Hall of Mirrors contains a total of 357 mirrors and about 20,000 candles were used to light it up to all its glory. The list goes on.
And some inside pics
But there’s much more to Versailles than the Palace. Before Louis XIV decided to take over the place, it was a sleepy hamlet about 10 miles from Paris. Now it is an affluent outer suburb with lots of beautiful lane ways and old buildings. We did a walking tour and were joined by an Australian who has lived there for years. She explained that this is the most Catholic town in France, with an average of 4.5 children per family. It takes a lot of money to live in Versailles and rates are based on the size of families – the bigger the family, the more you pay (as opposed to Australia where the more children you have, the more government benefits you get).
One of the quirky things we saw in Versailles was the work of “Invader”, an incognito French street artist who likes to decorate street corners and public spaces with tiled mosaics. These are based on video game characters such as Space Invaders. Apparently the French authorities were not too fond of these when they first appeared but now there are thousands of them, even in Hong Kong. There is also an app so you can add photos and locations. Here’s an example
Well that was my week. Lee went to the markets on Saturday and bought a sausage on bread. For market research purposes. These cost €3 (about $5) and come with pommes frittes if you want them but no onions.
Well that’s about it for now.
Bon soir
L & M
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