 |
| this room is so full...lets just see if we can fit oooone more wafer-thin mint in there... |
 |
| dinner for 50 hahaha whaT |
 |
| louvre snuck in this lot |
 |
| hall of mirrors ooo |
 |
| and suddenly my £6 'ornate' ikea mirror doesnt seem quite so fancy...this is above a bed fyi |
 |
| my awesome ma |
 |
| margie gets her bike on |
 |
| hahahaha, now this cracked me the hell up. who let (name) drive the chariot. stuckinapond woops |
The next day mum ventured out to get us some coffees in the morning, and came back with two espressos looking rather confused...'why are they so small Lan...what is this..does it even have milk? or sugar?' as she tries a sip 'ueuuugh, what if I put mine in yours and you just drink both expressos' at which point I was like maaaaaaaam did you just call them expressos, like, express?? It was pretty funny, cos it's espresso ma...Anywho we caught the train out to Versailles to check out the palace. We planned on going early but managed to waste the morning and get there about 1. It only takes about 25 minutes to train there, from the station at the end of our tram line, and if anyone reading this is going, I'd buy a return ticket, or your train ticket home when you first arrive at the stop, as when we went to leave (just after the Palace closed at 6.30) and the line to get tickets was out the door pretty much. So yeah, handy hint.
I'd semi read a little bit about it and seen pictures before, but walking around the road from the station and coming up on the palace was like whoaaaaaa. It is just insane. Here is a map from Wikipedia of the Palace and the grounds:
So you can begin to get the scale of things. First of all we mulled around the massive courtyard like eh heck where do we begin, but then realised it was one of them walks that led you round without you doubling back on yourself which was good. And even tho all the furniture etc in there isn't original, its still Oh-MY-fanciful-extravagance-and-speechlessness to walk through. The sheer amount of brocade and gold edging is just insane. Everything, like,
everything, in that place is unbelievable. Beds, tables, chairs, cushions, walls, floors friggin everything. I can't believe people used to live like that and also the people that must have slaved away making all that stuff. Just wow.
Moving right along...we stopped for lunch in the cafe inside, then headed for the gardens. We thought about getting a wee golf cart to hoon around on, but then the line was too big so we just walked instead. It was a really nice day too, and there was a bike hire place sort of halfway we planned on going to, so we headed off for that. After a hilarious no-my-mum-needs-a-smaller-bike moment with the hire guys we were off. Only to find you couldnt actually go through the closest gardens to the palace on bikes, and also a whole bunch of the 'grottos' we closed to the public anyway. Meh. We biked around some of that big cross shaped pond you can see on the map. There were some hilarious people on the boats you could hire singing massive ballads that we laughed at, lots of manicured tree patterns, and lots of people to avoid hitting hahah. We visited 'The Queens Hamlet' which is a wee spot on the right of that big cross pond. It was built for Marie Antoinette, and you have seen the old Kirsten Dunst movie, it's that part at the end that is all grassy and awesome. It was all down to earth and simple and cute and vege gardens, which was hilarious considering it was opposite
that freaking palace.
After we returned our bikes and walked around the gardens a bit more, we stopped for an ice cream then left for the train station. And encountered the massive line I was talking about earlier. We got back to our hotel, and headed out for dinner to the little place a few doors down, and had a really yum dinner. It was soooo tasty, and mum got to try bernaise sauce for the first time, which I'm pretty sure is everywhere in NZ right. It was so nice to be able to go out for dinner with mum. Nawww. Boo. I got a beer, and mum asked for a voddy hahah, and got like half a cup of straight vodka and a separate glass of juice hahah, it was pretty funny. First time I've ordered in a French restaurant and not received mussels tho win!
Oh man. Last day of France. Nutha day. Dragging this out aren't I. Hope you're all enjoying the beginnings of winter Family! Toodles.
Comments