Versaille use to be the capital of France until the revolution, or a war, or someone's doing something they weren't suppose to or they were beheaded, I can't exactly remember. There were some Louis, 14-16 of them. Some of them lived there, most were kings, most had wives. No one ever said "let them eat cake" and there were some mirrors.
Versaille was amazing. The amount of gold was astronomical. Every piece of wood was gold leafed or painted with gold paint (don't now exactly how they do it). I took an hour and a half tour of the King's chambers. This was a private tour with 20 other people. The public isn't allowed in those rooms so it was nice not to be crowded by hundreds of other people.
Most of the rooms don't have furniture because during the French Revolution France was very poor and needed money so they sold paintings and furniture. Versaille recently acquired chest from Christie's auction house. It was listed for 10 million Euro. The owner of Christie's decided to buy it and give it to Versaille, of course he only paid half price. After the tour I did the normal walk through. There aren't that many rooms available to look at. The main attraction being the great Hall of Mirrors.
I really can't say much about the actual palace. It was amazing but I think my expectations were a little too high so it didn't ah me as much as I thought it would. The gardens however were amazing. There are two sections to the gardens, the free part and the not free part. Unless you want to walk all the way around, you have to pay to get through the free part right b
ehind the palace. They have music playing and have the fountains going in the afternoon which was amazing.Marie Antoinette's estate was nice, much more humble than her husbands. It was evident it was just for her though. Much smaller rooms, less gold, and felt like you could actually live there.
4 hours of wandering and I felt like I had seen most of the palace, gardens and adjacent estates. Very spectacular.
"The Manny"
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