One of our days in Paris included a side trip to Versailles, the grand palace built by Louis XIV and also later inhabited by the famous Marie-Antoinette.  This place is huge and immaculate.  You might be able to imagine what the palace would look like – rich and lavish and gaudy.  But you could never imagine the size of the gardens unless you see it yourself.  There are statues and flowers and fountains and manicured trees and hedges and lakes and an enormous canal.  And then, away from that palace, Louis XIV built another palace, the Grand Trianon (to get away from all the people at the main palace).  Then Marie-Antoinette had yet another small retreat built, the Petit Trianon, and a small fairy-tale-like farm (the Hamlet) where she’d pretend to be a peasant girl.

Ben and I rented bikes at Versailles.  We thought that would let us explore more of the gardens and Hamlet areas, but it turned out we couldn’t take our bikes in there, so we left them parked for over an hour.  But we did ride the bikes all the way around the canal, which was really fun and gave our feet a little break.

We were all exhausted by the end of the day, but it was well worth the trip.  It’s amazing to think of how much money was put into something like this, and it gives some context to the French Revolution.