Chateau de Versailles

The drive to Versailles took a little while which was good because by the time we got there the rain had stopped. So here a just a few fun facts about Versailles. Versailles belonged to Louis the XIV know as the Sun King. He chose the sun because it illuminates the whole world, just like him. In the XIVV century, 10,000 people entered Versailles every day. 1,000 leading nobles had their private apartments in the chateau, 9,000 soldiers lived in the palace, 4,000 servants were needed, there were 200,000 candle lamps in the palace, there are 2,000 rooms, and 2,143 windows. There are 67 staircases, 352 fireplaces, 60 varieties of marble were used in the decoration, the grand canal measures 3,523 in perimeter and covers a surface of 59 acres, the water required to feed the fountains in the park amounts to 211,860 cubic feet, there are 200 sculptures in the gardens, and 30,000 inhabitants lived in the town when the sun king died.One more fun fact, some 60% of all the state revenues in France were poured into Versailles. On the scale of today's U.S. federal budget that would amount to $840 billion per year. Now that you know a little about it here are the pictures, and if you look close you will see that yea, it is under construction.











So here are the inside shots. The first is the chapel and then from there I don't know what pictures are from what room but they are in the order that we toured them.























































Some of you may be thinking that the last picture looks familiar. Well it should, it is the Coronation which I had in the Louvre post. The original is in the Louvre and then King Louis the XIV ask the artist to paint him one for Versailles or something like that. The way you can tell the two apart is that in this one one of the girls has on a pink dress, supposedly this is like the artists mistress or something like like and that is why he painted it this way. So below are the pictures of the hall of mirrors.









Here is what Versailles looks like from the gardens.







So the gardens where amazing and very pretty, however because of the time of year they still had some of the statues covered. I bet it would be amazing to see them when it is a little warmer and everything is in bloom and the fountains are going.









Here is me and Richard in front of one of the fountains.



So the weather stayed nice the whole time we were there and while we were outside, but the minute we got back in the bus it started to pour. Talk about perfect timing. Up next: Suc la Cur, our last night in Paris.