When we were in Paris, we went to the Versailles Gardens. I mean we also went into the palace, and the Trianons as well, but I liked the gardens the best, so this is about them. Mostly. As the title suggests, we did 32,000 steps and 20km of walking, about one and a half of what we did at Disneyland. Versailles was kind of like Disneyland too. That is, if Disneyland was built in the 1700’s by the French Monarchy.
Mum got us up at the insanely early hour of 7:15am. Not early but also very early for someone who likes to sleep in (me). We took the train all the way to Versailles. On the way I learnt that Versailles, although we though we travelled for about an hour, is still part of France, the same way the Dandenongs are part of Melbourne (something else I didn’t know. I don’t know a lot of stuff).
Walking up to the palace was like seeing the Disney castle for the first time. Done up in beige with grey-blue roofs and covered in gilding, it was massive, and beautiful, and massively beautiful. King Louis (that is XIII, XIV, XV and XVI) certainly didn’t do things by halves. We had tickets to the gardens, the palace and a one o’clock guided tour of the King’s Apartments.
Walking up to the Versailles Palace.
Starting in the gardens. There are 850 hectares of park (8.5 km2) full of fountains, and statues, and flowers, and topiaries (which B promptly nicknamed “topis/topies”) and lawns, and lakes. We spent about 4 hours in the gardens. We followed this suggested walking route around the gardens. Our first stop was the Orangery.
The Orangery was a big courtyard filled with, surprise surprise!, orange trees. They were all sitting in planter boxes with wheels because French winters are too cold for oranges so in winter, they all move inside. The grass was cut in cool swirly patterns. I wondered when the gardeners came because Versailles is open pretty much all the time. Imagine trying to work on the gardens in the middle of the night.
L’Orangery
The next stop was the Latona Fountain. Latona is Artemis and Apollo’s mother. The fountain has a gold statue of her holding a baby Artemis, and Apollo, protecting them from the peasants of Lycia, who were being meanies, and pleading with Zeus to avenge them. He does, and turns the people of Lycia into the world’s first frogs and lizards. Some of the people were only halfway through transformation so they had a human body with a frog head. Unfortunate way to be stuck for the rest of eternity.
Latona Fountain, The Great Lawn & The Great Lake
We walked down to the Great Lawn that was just a really, really, really long lawn. At the intersection, we headed towards the Ballroom. It wasn’t so much of a ballroom as a massive ball-grove with a cascading fountain. There was music playing, so we all had a dance. We walked through the Queen’s Grove, Marie Antoinette’s private garden. We passed the Bacchus/Dionysus/Mr D fountain where we saw him chilling with some grapes and wine.
Then we went to the mirror pool. It was a massive pool with fountains that danced to music! We arrived as they were finishing but by the time we walked around the pool (it was a very big pool) they’d started up again! We stood and watched but they just seemed to go on forever and ever and ever! You think it’s done and then ‘FWOOSH!’ it keeps going! When we finally left, we walked through the Kings Garden. It was, as the name suggests, the garden of the King.
We walked up to Apollo’s Fountain. In Apollo’s Fountain there are two things. A big shiny statue of Apollo, riding the sun chariot out of the lake, (wait I lied, three things) lots of jets of water and massive fish. Like real fish, swimming around the pool except they were all 50-60cm long. There were also ducks. Regular sized ducks, not giant ducks.
Apollo’s Fountain
We went down to Enceladus (Enchiladas) Grove. *GREEK MYTHOLOGY* Enceladus is a child of Gaia and Ouranos (the earth and the sky), a giant. Each giant was born to oppose/defeat an Olympian God so that the giants could rule the earth and whatnot. Enceladus was Athena’s enemy. In Enceladus’s Grove there was a big golden statue (What is it with gold? ALL the statues are gold.) of Enceladus being born from the earth and rising out of a pile of rocks.
Enceladus being born and rising from The Earth.
Obelisk Grove (the next stop) was kinda disappointing. IT HAD NO OBELISK! You can’t call something Obelisk Grove and not have an obelisk in it. There was, however, another fountain. We moved on quickly. We went past the Flora/Chloris fountain. In the middle sat a golden Flora, surrounded by colourful flowers (finally! something other than gold). Then we went to Dauphin’s Grove. In the middle was, what a surprise!, another fountain with a gold statue (cause there weren’t enough of those) of a fish, spraying water straight up out of its mouth.
My favourite part of the garden, or, at least tied for favourite, was the King’s Viewpoint. There is a specific spot in the middle of the garden where you can see Latona Fountain behind you, Dauphin Grove Fountain, Girandale Fountain, the four seasons fountains, and Apollo Fountain and the Great Lake (a massive lake) in front of you. The four season fountains are my favourites. Each season is represented by a Roman God or Goddess. Summer is Ceres (Roman)/Demeter (Greek), the Goddess of the harvest and fertility. Autumn is Bacchus (Roman)/Dionysus (Greek)/Mr D (Percy Jackson), the God of wine. Winter is Saturn (Roman)/Kronos (Greek), the God of time, wealth and agriculture. Spring is Flora (Roman)/Chloris (Greek), the Goddess of spring and flowers.
left to right, top to bottom - Summer/Ceres, Autumn/Bacchus, Winter/Saturn, Spring/Flora
From there we walked to the Water Theatre Grove where we ate lunch. Mum had made baguette sandwiches + lots of snacks. Then we walked down to the Dragon Pool which is, as the name suggests, a gold statue of a dragon in pool with a fountain. Well, the name suggests about half of that but if you’ve seen Versailles it’s not hard to guess the rest. Neptune’s Fountain, although very big, was kinda underwhelming. It didn’t even have shiny gilded statues!
As we were walking back to the castle, it started to rain. Luckily, we were headed back inside for our tour. Perfect timing. Inside the palace, we went on a tour of The King’s Apartments. We saw both of the King’s bed chambers, the library, the study, a dining room, and the waiting rooms. We went to the main area of the palace, and saw the hall of mirrors, the rooms where they held court and so on. It was a big palace. We also saw the silver horse that rode through the Seine in the olympics. They’d moved it to Versailles.
The King’s Waiting Room and The Olympic Horse
It wasn’t always though. In 1631, King Louis XIII built a hunting lodge. Over the years, various other Louis (XIV, XV, XVI) expanded it into the Versailles Palace as well as the Gardens and Trianons. During the French Revolution, although most of the furniture and stuff had been sold, the palace itself remained mostly intact. Napoleon lived there for a while, using it as his summer house from 1810 to 1814. Then, in 1833, this guy, Louis Philippe, decided to turn the Palace of Versailles into The Museum of The History of France. He wanted long corridors and staircases so he knocked down some walls and crashed through the floor and Voila! We walked through his gallery of the glories of French victories.
Our final destination was The Trianons. When you got sick of your 63,154 m2, 2,300 room, palace, you went to the Trianons. We walked through the gardens to get there. There are two trianons, The Grand Trianon and The Petit Trianon (creative names) as well as the Queen’s Hamlet. The Grand Trianon was Louis XIV’s second house, as well as where Napoleon lived during his time at Versailles. The Petit Trianon was where Marie Antoinette went to relax and have parties. The Queen’s Hamlet was the coolest one though. It was where you went once you got tired of the Palace and BOTH of the Trianons. It was as if the Small Provincial Town from Beauty and the Beast had come to life! And, we were in France too. It was built for Marie Antoinette in 1783 where she hung out with her besties.
The Queen’s Hamlet/Small Provincial Town
We got home at around 9:45pm ish. Versailles was really fun but super exhausting. *note - We also probably saw about 10% of Versailles. It is MASSIVE!