Sorry this post is so late...going through all my Versailles photos took me ages!
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The latest from my travels, and the start of a new series (because it just sounds so much more professional and cool if it's a series) which Ellie and I have decided to call our 'Spring Séjour'. We have lots of exciting trips planned for our last few weeks in France (can't quite believe I'm saying that!!) and of course I feel myself compelled to blog about them. First up, a trip to the north Brittany coast. We intended to go to Dinan and Dinard in one day as they're not far from each other...
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| I'm such a helpful blog writer |
...but unfortunately the French travel system was once again against us. Not to bore you too much with our issues, but we were meant to change trains which I didn't realise so we accidentally ended up in Saint Malo instead of Dinan. After much deliberation and asking around, we discovered there was a bus about to leave for Dinard...which we just missed, and had to wait another hour.
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| Having finally discovered where we're going |
It was totally worth it though as Dinard was absolutely beautiful: it was a fairly cold day and the wind from the sea was pretty biting so the layers were definitely necessary, but it was so sunny and the sea was so blue! The fact that it was cold and windy reminded me of the beaches in Yorkshire where my Dad's family live, and we had lunch in a little café that was just the right amount of seaside tourism and cosiness, just like in Yorkshire. We also made friends with a seagull with an injured leg...who still flew away from us, despite his ailment.
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| At least it LOOKS like it was 30ºC |
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| Me and our new friend |
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| Nice, cute, inexpensive café for lunch...perfect |
There were loads of beautiful views and harbours and castles to explore, and it felt so Breton! There was lots to look round - we had to bypass a castle-type building and an AQUARIUM - and we could have spent hours just wandering along by the sea, although I'm very glad it wasn't raining! It was just a really lovely town, and very stereotypically Breton.
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| Castle-type place |
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| Me attempting to be arty in my photo-taking |
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| Dinard town centre |
Having wandered round the town for a bit - which was equally quaint - and visited a bookshop (of course), we went back to the bus stop as we still wanted to get to Dinan and neither of us could actually feel our faces. This is when we realised the bus to Dinan didn't run at weekends (don't ask me why, I don't know) so we would have to go back to Saint Malo and get the bus from there. Patting ourselves on the back for using our initiative and not letting the crazy French travel timetables get in our way, we happily set off back to St Malo, only to discover that the bus to Dinan from St Malo - which we knew ran on a Saturday - didn't run between 1:30 and 5:30pm, at which point it would be way too late to look round, and meant we had left Dinard early for no reason. And to add insult to injury, we still had to wait over an hour for our train back to Rennes, and buy another return ticket because we couldn't use our Dinan return from earlier and couldn't find an option to just buy a single journey. So we have yet to see Dinan! Barton and Watson...making mistakes so you don't have to (
©Eleanor Barton).
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Now we come to potentially our most anticipated trip of all...we FINALLY made it to the Palace of Versailles!! We got the train there and the bus back to allow us plenty of time there but also cut costs, so after a very early start we made it to the château just before 10:30am. We both thought it would be kind of in the middle of nowhere, but in fact it's on the outside of a little town: it was weird to go round the corner and see this massive palace at the end of the road.
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| Normal road, then BAM, huge 17th Century château |
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| Louis welcoming us to his home |
After a slight argument with the admissions man who didn't believe we were European citizens because we hadn't brought our passports (the tourist office told us we could get in for free as we were in Europe for more than 6 months and students in France, but he wasn't having any of it) we came out into the ground floor corridor which had been converted into a sort-of timeline documenting the history of Versailles from when it was just a small hunting lodge in the time of Louis III, through the renovations and expansions of Louis XIV, XV and XVI and Marie Antoinette, the French Revolution and then up to present day.
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| Listening to our audioguides before they broke |
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| A model of early Versailles before it was expanded |
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| Paintings of the Versailles of old |
We then followed the tour round the various rooms of the rest of the palace: I figured the most interesting way to tell you about this would be to just show you a selection of the photos I took, complete with (hopefully) correct captions telling you what room it is, which I have looked up in my trusty souvenir guidebook. The thing that struck me most about Versailles was the sheer size and grandeur of it all, and its beauty. I know it sounds obvious, but it really was absolutely massive and it was as if the old kings had a completely unlimited budget to spend: every tiny detail was incredible, even the things nobody would ever really see were done with no expense spared. Also, unlike a lot of other stately homes which are grand and expensive-looking but kind of dark and depressing, Versailles is light and airy and tastefully decorated: I would actually move in tomorrow and not change anything. Anyway, on with the photos!
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| A very grand staircase |
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| The chapel |
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| The Mercury Drawing Room |
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| The War Drawing Room |
Then we came to the château's pièce de résistance...the Galerie des Glaces, or Hall of Mirrors (although where the French title seems glamorous and sophisticated, I think the English translation makes it sound like a fairground attraction). This is a really long room with chandeliers all along it, and then windows along one side and mirrors on the other, making it seem really light and spacious. It was stunning!
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| Mirror selfie |
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| Please let me decorate my house like this |
Then a look round the rest of the main palace, back out into the marble court and out to the Mesdames' apartment, where the some of the daughters of Louis XV lived.
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| The Queen's apartment...so Cath Kidston |
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| Me in the Marble Court |
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| The Mesdames' apartment |
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| Madame Victoire's apartment |
At this point we had FINALLY finished going round the main palace, and headed out to the gardens. The grounds of Versailles are spread over 800 hectares and contain no less than 50 fountains (thanks Wikipedia), so safe to say they're pretty massive. The Grand Canal runs through the middle with different gardens sectioned off around it, all in different styles and with amazing features and fountains in each one. I especially wanted to see the famous Fountain of Apollo which I wrote about in an essay in my first year of uni...it was so nice to finally get to see it in real life!
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| The grounds as seen from the palace |
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| Bassin d'Apollon |
At this stage in the day we were rapidly running out of time, so we headed straight for the
trianons and Marie Antoinette's hamlet, which we both really wanted to see. We didn't have time to look in the
Grand Trianon, but this is what it looked like from the outside...
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| Where the royal family spent their summer holidays |
The Petit Trianon as it is today was mostly designed by Marie Antoinette, who was given the house by Louis XVI to "escape the formality of court life" (lucky her), and as soon as we walked in I decided this was where I wanted to live out my life. It's still pretty big as houses go, but absolutely tiny compared to the main palace....sort of normal stately home size, and it has all the rooms you would need without them being disgustingly massive. And it was decorated completely to my taste, lots of light and white and gold with accents of colour here and there. I really don't know why they don't just let me have it, they have more than enough to go round without it. Also sorry for the rubbish photo quality, my camera was apparently not a fan of the lighting.
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| It's literally something out of Jane Austen |
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| JUST LOOK HOW BEAUTIFUL IT IS |
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| See, it's really very moderately sized |
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| The gorgeous Salon de Compagnie |
Finally we visited Marie Antoinette's hamlet (I guess so she could see what it was like to be a 'poor person', but to be fair to her it did actually have a working farm and stuff) which was like a model village except not in miniature. It was actually like walking round a fairy tale, or a Disney film set: I had to keep reminding myself I wasn't actually a princess. It was sad.
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| The farm, which actually had real animals! |
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| I kept expecting to see someone singing from the top of this |
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| See, actual real chickens |
So there we have it!! Sorry it's taken so long to upload, but as you can see there are a LOT of photos, and these are just a select few from the thousands that I took. If you're ever in the Ile-de-France region, I would 100% recommend visiting Versailles if you can, it's well worth a visit!
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