Years ago I did some research on Marie Antoinette, the
French Revolution, the Reign of Terror, etc., for a novel I was working on. I
never finished the novel (though I’d love to go back to it), but the history
stayed with me.
So we couldn’t visit Paris without visiting Versailles. It
was as amazing as you’d guess. I was disappointed in the fountains—none of them
were running and the biggest of the fountains was being restored so it was a
maze of construction and dirt.
But here is the Hall of Mirrors.
And a photo of the chapel, from the second story balcony.
And here is Marie Antoinette’s bedchamber.
This is the door she escaped through when the mobs came to
Versailles.
Apparently, the guards feared reprisals from the mobs and when they
demanded entry to the palace grounds, the guards opened the gates.
Here’s her bed in Le Grand Trianon, a second smaller palace
on the grounds of Versailles.
And here’s her bed in Le Petit Trianon. Apparently, Marie
didn’t like the grandeur, pomp, and court intrigue of the main palace or even
the much smaller Grand Trianon. So she spent most of her time living in Le
Petit Trianon.
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| Yes, the bed is really tiny. You'd have to curl into a ball to sleep there. |
If you go back to the photo of the first bed, note the thick
layer of dust on the bedspread--so thick you can't even see the pattern on the fabric. This is one of my few complaints about Paris. The
museums and cathedrals have serious dust issues. Cal sneezed a lot. (I took allergy
medicine.) I know the French have lots of work maintaining their historical
artifacts, so I was thinking that I'd get together a group of dusting friends and
we’d dust the museums, churches, etc. (My Dutch immigrant friends have all
volunteered—they have a cultural aversion to dust, even a speck.) And the
French government wouldn’t have to pay us, just buy us a plane ticket. They
wouldn’t even have to get us a hotel room. We’d be happy to bunk out at
Versailles.
