Versailles!

A few weeks ago, Joel booked a walking tour of the Chateau de Versailles. Yesterday, he received a message from our tour guide that our tour would be delayed until 12:30. Something to do with the upcoming general strike. We decided to take the train over early and walk through the gardens first. Because we already had tickets we could avoid the lineup. Nice.

French gardening is so different from English gardening. The French love order.

I could have spent a week taking pictures of the sculptures at Versailles.

We walked as far as the eye can see in this photo and spent quite a bit of time in the wooded areas where there were grand allées and beautiful ponds...

... with water shows set to music.

Rawda met us slightly after 12:30. She had been waiting for two other people who had signed up but did not show. She guided us through the palace, and told us a treasure trove of facts about each room. I know so little about French history. I need to correct that. It is so fascinating.

Most of the trees in this garden get taken inside for the winter. Many of them are citrus trees.

There are some wonderful restaurants on the grounds. My salad description said something about roasted potatoes. There were tiny, marble-sized potatoes here and there throughout the salad. I need to try making that sometime. It was delicious.

Ted will be very jealous of Joel's meal. Sausages and potatoes with vegetables. "Vegetables?" you ask. Do you see those tiny brown salad leaves?

After lunch, we rented bikes. Screechy, rattly bikes that had never seen an ounce of maintenance. We wanted the bikes because walking over to the Estate of Trianon would add far too many steps to our day. Trianon used to be a town, but Louis XIV bought it and built a palace there, the Grand Trianon. They were places where the royal family could retreat from the demands of life in the court of Versailles.

Sadly, the back door was not open.

I love the shape of French pumpkins.

The last part of this post comprises pictures that Joel took without me knowing. We really enjoyed what turned into a private tour of Versailles.

There was so much to see. You could spend a month at Versailles and not see everything fully.

We learned that all of the gold outside is now not real gold, but all of the gold inside still is real gold.

I'll finish with a sound of biking in Versailles. Squeak, rattle, rattle, squeak.

Today's steps: 21.205 - not quite 15K.