Hi, it's Caitlin. I’m here to take you through Day 3—which will be a bit of a history lesson, but will feel more like an award winning Broadway musical and comedy if I do this right. Day 3 was all about King Louis the XlV, and I’m already working on the songs—I just need that Hamilton guy to listen to me.
Anyway, we spent the entire day at Versailles, and we’ll be talking a lot about Louis XlV and his insane mega palace he built outside of Paris, so from here on out I’m calling him, Lou.
So Lou really, really loved life. He liked to party, mingle with the ladies, start fashion trends, and of course, win battles. All of Lou’s friends gave him the nickname “Sun King,” comparing him to Apollo who was believed to have carried the sun across the sky. He took it pretty (too?) far, and built whole rooms, fountains and statues around himself as the Sun God. Actually, the entire palace of Versailles could be viewed as a shrine to just how not human he appeared to be.
When you get that first headlong glimpse at the Palace of Versailles, you start to question just what is and is not possible in the world. How humans built this mind-blowingly gigantic place, let along hundreds of years ago, is beyond me.
We got to the town of Versailles at about 9:45am, a time that I can now confidently say is not the absolute worse time to get there, but pretty damn close.
As we got closer, our wonder and excitement quickly turned to disbelief and panic that all of those ants milling about were indeed humans….attempting to form some long, twisted Guiness-Book of World Records type line throughout the courtyard of the palace.
While it was a test in patience for me when I realized that it would be a good hour before I got to the security checkpoint inside the palace, it was a feat of strength for me to not just turn around and leave when (multiple) tour buses of people piled out to cut the line when they arrived late because they’d sent a “line saver.” This practice should be outlawed, and is immoral.
Of course, time passed more quickly once we were able to turn the corner of pissed off and disappointed to schadenfreude—laughing at those people that would show up and try to cut the entire line because they were sure that they wouldn’t be subjected to such a horrendous procedure.
This is a good place to talk about Lou’s spawn-descendent, Louis the XVl and his wife Marie-Antoinette, who were dragged from this very castle one night after thousands of peasant Parisans broke down these golden gates and raided the house. You could easily picture such a riot happening here, while everyone just looks incredulously at each other like, “But I bought a ticket ahead of time, there’s no way that I have to stand in this shit, do I?”
Once we’d passed the security checkpoint and were turned loose to roam the palace, we thought we were the only one’s with a plan (Rick’s plan) on how to most efficiently tackle the interior, but it seemed that everyone had the same itinerary. There will be many people in these following shots.
First, the Cathedral (within the palace) in which Lou and his family would attend service every morning from their balcony, and all of the nobles below would turn their backs on the alter and kneel to the Sun King.
Lou’s bedroom was located at none other than the very center of the palace on the second floor, looking directly out over the front entrance, into the court yard and directly toward the Eastern horizon. With the windows open, the rising sun would shine directly into Lou’s room and glitter off of all the crystals and gold in his bedroom—which covered pretty much everything.
We made our way through large marble rooms with fresco-painted ceilings, massive fireplaces, and all were ornately decorated to honor one god or another, though most served as additional rooms to party in when the alcohol flowed over—which was almost every night.
The Hall of Mirrors was beautiful, of course, with one entire wall reflecting back the images of the gardens from the windows that lined the entire wall opposite. Wayyy back in the day (1700s), mirrors were rare and expensive, and to use them in this way was a show of power and vanity.
Speaking of vanity, we learned that it was our friend Lou who brought the powdered wig to trend, donning a few different wigs a day to make sure that his receding hairline was covered.
From the palace, we wandered out into the gardens, where Lou was known to host parties, theaters, and concerts, while providing many hedge maze hideaways for nobles and their lovers.
Lou’s own "main-side squeeze" mistress (there were unofficial and official mistresses throughout his marriages) got her own palace, called the Grand Trianon. Lou had this pink palace built for Madame de Montespan, located on the other side of the sprawling gardens and hidden away from the hustle and bustle of the main castle. Louis would spend a few nights a week there, and more so in the summer when the castle would get out of control with parties and visitors. Madame de Montespan ended up having 7 children with the king.
While Ian and I were strolling around the Grand Trianon, we were both pretty sure that Madame M had the best gig in the whole ordeal. No fussy rules, no stupid drunk nobles peeing in your bed…just your own palace to kick it and wait for the king to come meet up for a night cap.
Besides the Grand Trianon, there was also a Petit Trainon, also a gift from a king (Lou’s spawn-decendent, Louis the XV) to his main side squeeze, Madame de Pompadour. It was this mini palace that was given to Marie Antoinette on her wedding day as a gift from her husband Louis the XVl. A kind of “here honey, please go away,” wedding gift.
The Petit Trianon and the entire surrounding garden area (again, a miserable walk for anyone really, let alone someone wearing pounds of dress clothes and a wig), was the place that Marie Antoinette turned into her own mini kingdom, enforcing a strict “keep out” rule that remained even in place against her husband, and was only lifted for very specific friends or acquaintances.
In the gardens there was a small stone and glass house that she liked to sleep in and play games with her friends. She also had her own theater built, complete with balconies and an orchestra pit. She would perform here with her friends. She also had a small village built, so that she could pretend to be a peasant.
I'll take this one, please.
Once we’d had our fill of Lou, Marie A., and the rest of the gang, we dragged our broken bodies out of the gardens and to the closest place we could eat in town. After spending the better part of three days walking and forgetting to eat, we each crushed a Kebab and hopped back on the overly crowded train to Paris.
Last night we decided to go partake in an hours long drinking and dining experience, something that you tend to feel bad about back in America but something that is very much part of French culture here. We’d be sitting next to a table of two or three people and they would just cycle through friends, people that knew them and came up to them on the street, saying where they would meet them for dessert later, the whole thing. Ian and I put down roots at a café in our neighborhood and had a few rounds outside, admiring all the passersby and their astonishingly well-behaved puppies and kids.
Then, for dinner we made it over to a crêperie that was right across the street from the place we’d eaten the night before. I ordered a wheat crepe with goat cheese, spinach, ham, and honey. Ian ordered wheat crepe with salmon and cream cheese.
We wandered around some dark streets until we found a place that could sell us a couple of bottles of wine, and open them for us as we had no wine opener in our apartment. The rest of the night was spent drinking wine, eating gummy bears, and trying to figure out how to get the damn blog to work (I hope you got the post yesterday, and re-check out the first one with fresh new pictures added).
Currently, I’m writing this en route to Switzerland. I think we’ll make it okay, unless they play Coldplay’s Chainsmokers song one more time, then Ian may drive us right off the side of a bridge. Seriously, it’s an every 30 minutes song here.
See you next time, from Switzerland!