It turns out that the Louvre is not the only tourist site closed on Tuesdays. In fact, almost everything EXCEPT Versailles is closed, meaning that everybody had the same idea. So we joined the gigantic line and said to ourselves "Surely it can't take that long. Even if we have to wait for a whole hour, that's not so bad."
HA. Try three hours. For unknown reasons the Versailles workers have not yet mastered the gentle art of crowd organization, and hence our "lines" were actually zigzaggy blobs of tired people hoping that they were headed in the right direction. The only signs posted said "LINE UP HERE" and gave no further information. The British and American tourists were all muttering bitterly about French incompetency as we shuffled our way around the same patch of cobblestones. The French tourists seemed nonchalant. As time wore on and lunch approached, they cheerfully pulled baguette sandwiches out of their backpacks and started munching away while the rest of us looked on, dumbstruck at their ingenuity and foresight and general sense of life knowledge and so forth.
We ate a couple of clementines we found at the bottom of my purse, which I still think indicates stunning levels of preparation.
Suddenly, around 1 pm, the Versailles workers deigned to bestow helpful information on us. As we approached the end of the line, all smiles and relief, somebody pulls out a microphone and announces "If you are under 26, you should not be in this line. Go to the line at the other end of the courtyard."
Thunderstuck, Dustin and I turn slowly to face the other line. It is equally huge and looks like another three hours looming ahead of us. I mutter angrily "We're staying in this one and you can shove it!" Everybody in our immediate vicinity had already spent so much time hating the French tourist system that by this point we were close friends, united in the common cause of...hating the French tourist system. They quickly agreed that they could think of several lovely places to put the spokesperson's microphone.
So long story short, we should have gone to the other line. We got free tickets, which was awesome, but even awesomer was discovering that the other line was the ENTRY LINE, because oh yes, there is more than one line. So, back we went to the courtyard, resigned to our fate.
We got into Versailles eventually. I must say that despite all the hours of endless waiting (which was mostly due to inadequate staff and bad foot traffic organization) the palace is pretty cool. The ultimate test of coolness is having to put up with such an ordeal and then still finding that the reason you went through the multi-hour line is totally worth the trouble.
The audio tour helped a lot. We were crowded into Versailles like cattle and there was lots of background noise, so each person got a headset and we listened to the tour individually. I learned all kinds of delightful things: exactly how many mountains of gold were melted down and painted onto the walls; that 19 French princes and princesses were born in public (and heaven help us, probably conceived that way too); the disgusting way Louis XIV was fawned over during his lifetime; and so on. Very few things are more hilarious than hearing a calm, charming tour guide's voice say the words "In the morning, the head nurse would come in and kiss Louis XIV awake, because he was too delicate to be awakened rudely. Then the head doctor would remove his shirt and pat him down with a soft towel, because he tended to sweat." To hear him say it, you would have thought he was talking about the finer points of petunia gardening or something equally charming, instead of a sweaty old fat short man in a wig who invented high heels for his own use.
Still, Louis is fun to have around, if only because his public portraits make me split my sides laughing. I can't count the number of paintings I saw that involved Greek gods worshipping Louis as Apollo and so on and so forth. Here's a fairly famous painting that I took particular joy in mocking. It's too bad you can't see my "dainty leg" as I like to call it, but Louis' dainty leg is ten times better anyway.
And here we have your fairly average gold-encrusted TOILET:
Not to mention the dazzling Hall of Mirrors (FAVORITE):
Or the Royal Chapel:
And here we have Marie Antoinette's bed--there is a small door to the left of it which she escaped through when the Revolutionaries broke into the palace. Obviously didn't escape for long, but still, way to keep it feisty Marie.
Downstairs we found the suites designed for the royal prince and princesses. I liked the decoration a lot better; after seeing all that foofy gold, all that foofy green was really refreshing:
The gardens were almost the best part. It's too bad we spent so long in line, or we would have had more time to explore.
Anyway, Versailles was really lovely even if some parts are so ornate they give you a headache, and I really appreciated the moment where Henry decided it was time to eat--so we sat down on one of the antique velvet benches and promptly spilled milk powder all over it. Oh well; we've left our mark on Versailles and Versailles has left its mark on us (yep, still sore from standing in line for hours with Henry strapped on.)
I'd love to come back someday to spend more time in the gardens and go see Marie Antoinette's estate, but maybe when Henry's a little older and can walk by himself or go two hours without needing food. It's a fun place; if you want to you can go boating down the canal and even take a pony ride around the estate. I imagine that Louis XIV would probably appreciate that kind of approach to tourism. A.k.a. really over-the-top.
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