Versailles and the Gardens

On day seven, we had the whole day to do whatever we wanted. So, a group of us started the day by going to eat in a little restaurant called “Breakfast in America,” which was started by a guy who moved to France from New York and really missed the American breakfast. We certainly missed it too considering breakfast in France is mainly just bread and coffee. The restaurant was right down the street from our hotel, and they even spoke English there. Paris is really awesome, but as a non-French speaking American, it’s nice to have those little pieces of home.

                After breakfast, we decided to go to Versailles, which is on the very edge of Paris. It took us a very long metro ride followed by a rather terrifying bus ride to get there, but it was definitely worth it. The mansion is impossibly huge and adorned with gold covered wall details and an extensive gold gate. We did have to wait in line for about 45 minutes with no shade, but we were in good company, and we definitely weren’t going to miss out on seeing the inside.

                Even the small portion that we got to see was absolutely spectacular. There were large chamber rooms, ball rooms, an opera room, and a mirror room which was filled with chandeliers. I also really liked the tour because it included some of the history of the construction and described how each King added onto it to create the massive size that it is now. The house and just the landscaped portion of the gardens, not including the hunting grounds, are easily larger than my entire hometown. The only downfall of Versailles is that it was extremely crowded. Luckily a lot of the decorations extended high onto the walls and ceilings, because you couldn’t exactly see past the crowd, and you just had to keep moving with all of the people. It was quite claustrophobic at times, and I know a few people who wouldn’t have been able to handle it.

                That day, they were having a water and music show in the gardens. I guess the fountains aren’t always running, so during this time all twenty fountains (probably more) were flowing and it was neat to see the gardens as the kings would have seen them. The grounds are so massive that we wandered around in one section for about forty-five minutes before looking at the map and realizing that we had only covered about one-tenth of it. There were a lot of really cool hedges that you could walk through, sort of like a maze, and we were always finding new fountains hidden away in the hills and shrubs. It was a very hot day, but we found some ice cream (hidden in one of the hedges), and traversed a large portion of the gardens before heading back home.