versailles – Darkk Horse Travel

Versailles is such a massive residence that I split the gardens and the palace into two days! Today was day 2 and well, the only pictures I have (of me) I had to beg from disgruntled tourists, so they’re both a little abstract. Walking through Versailles palace is a pretty incredible experience, and takes French artistic and architectural beauty to an entirely new level.

But it also allows you to understand why there were disgruntled citizens during the French Revolution. So much beauty, so much splendor, but at what price? The sheer enormity of rooms that were used for little more than show, the amount of art and gold and crystal chandeliers shining from the ceilings! But I couldn’t help but feel like it was an overdone beauty, a beauty screaming for attention rather than allowing it to speak for itself. It’s such a contrast to some of the most beautiful (in my opinion) places I’ve traveled this year.

Yes, you can melt all the gold in the world onto pillars of marble, but give be the beauty of a mountain river or a salt winded beach any day over the pomp of kings.

There has always been something beautifully captivating, to me, about Marie Antoinette. Aside from the political issues, I’ve just always been a fan of hers. I’m pretty sure I spent an entire year of my childhood just studying her, her life and history (for fun. Nerd alert.). This whole year, while living in Paris, I’ve been about 15 minutes away from Versailles palace (by train) but I’d never gone because I wanted the experience to be perfect. I wanted the gardens to be beautiful, and the palace gold to be glistening in the sun. Sounds amazing, right?

Well, that wasn’t quite how things happened. See, it would appear that Paris is on a cloudy, rainy and cold stint that we can’t seem to shake, and the weeks are winding down quickly until I’ll be returning to the U.S. So, yesterday one of my friends and I decided to just hop on the train and go. It was cold. It was cloudy. But the beauty of the gardens still shone through the experience and I’m very happy to say that overall it was pretty magical.

The gardens are absolutely huge. And I know you might think that’s a given, but until you start to walk around them, you don’t really realize just how enormous ‘huge’ actually means. After two hours we still hadn’t seen everything, and trying to fit in the palace on the same day would have been exhausting, so Part 2 of this adventure will be happening (hopefully!) this Tuesday! So excited! I’m going to go eat some cake.