Day 6: Conflans

 July 16:  The Palace of Versailles

Ever since I first taught World History many years ago I've always wanted to visit the palace of the Sun King, Louis XIV of France - the Palace of Versailles which is as big as many small towns and has well over 2,000 rooms.  Today was the day.  We woke up in Conflans a very small town outside of Paris where we docked for the morning.  Kim and I had no plans for the morning and slept in until 8 am and after breakfast went on a brief jaunt up the one and only street in town and found not one bakery, but two, both of which had éclairs - and as the local guide said after we thanked him for the directions, "of course you had to buy one from each shop!"  We spent the rest of the morning with the door open to the river and up on the top deck reading and relaxing.  We left about noon and sailed until a little after 1 pm where we were picked up for our excursion to the palace.

The ride was only a little over half an hour.  The complex, as we approached was even more massive than I ever imagined.  And the best part about our excursion was that we had paid extra to be a part of what was termed a "privileged access visit" - and we discovered reservations for today had been made two years ago and were limited to fifty guests.  What this meant was that we spent nearly 2/3 of our three hours there in areas where the general public could not go!  Multiple times a rope was lifted or a door was opened for only our group of 25 and when the "peasants" tried to follow they were sternly told "NO NO" and got "the hand" stopping their progress.  This enabled us to see both the inner apartments and the personal apartments to the king & queen.  The opulence was unbelievable.  We were told - if you remember your World History - that during the French Revolution nearly all the priceless objects were taken away and sold.  But a vast majority of them have been found and returned to the palace now.

Versailles from outside the gates

(NOTE - the palace goes FAR to either side and back behind where I was standing)

Versailles - inside the gates:  the courtyard

The Gate of Versailles

One of the outer buildings of Versailles

Hand crafted clock:  tells the year (up to 9,999 / the month / the day / the hour / the minute / the second / the phase of the moon.....all made of solid gold

All the ceilings - ALL, every square inch of the ceilings feature hand-painted scenes

Drapes in the palace office - WHY have a photo of drapes?

First, because they are made of silk and go floor to ceiling, about thirty feet over about a dozen windows in JUST this room; Second because the original ones were burned during the French Revolution so when the restoration began it was discovered the business which had HAND-MADE these silk-on-silk drapes was STILL in business.  Asked if they could recreate them they went into their files and had an ORIGINAL SWATCH of the drapes so they were duplicated - BY HAND - to be exact copies....WOW

The King's desk - the first roll-top in the history of the world, inlaid with gold and....

Note the different colors of the wood - that's not painted or colored, but DIFFERENT woods

The Hall of Mirrors:  357 mirrors, EACH cost about the same as an annual salary of one of the craftsmen who made them

We returned to the ship to find that it had made it's way to Paris and sat on the Seine River with the Eiffel Tower just ahead on the horizon.  Pretty cool.  We had just enough time to change for the "Gala Night" where we were told that IF you wanted to dress a little more formally tonight was the night.  A highlight of the evening was when the accordion player serenaded our great new friends Brian & Ros.  Brought tears to the eyes of the matriarch of our little band :)  We went upstairs and watched a cabaret show (which wasn't anything to write home about but was "entertaining").  Then we went upstairs to watch the lights on the Eiffel Tower twinkle for about ten minutes which they do on the hour.  Tomorrow is the final day of the cruise and we have a tour of the city of Paris before packing our bags and leaving for London for three nights beginning Tuesday.