versailles

Posted on | July 23, 2010 | 6 Comments

well.
now that i have seen versailles with my own eyes, i’ve got some FABULOUS inspiration for my own home and garden.

we need more gold around the house. and gilt. and carving. and ornate plaster work. and oil paintings. and furniture with inlays and repoussees and chassees. and murals on the ceilings. and REALLY high ceilings. and candles by the thousand. and mirrors, LOTS of mirrors. and marble panels. and canopies. and ostrich plumes. and tapestries. and carpets. and marble statuary. and lots and lots and lots of rooms. and some really huge long rooms to impress the visitors.

and the garden….ty, i hope you are reading this!
with a few fountains, and a few kilometres of ornamental lakes, and some white swans, and really extremely decorative statuary of dolphins, mermaids, neptune, cherubs, urns….you can make a really nice water feature.
and if we level everything and start from scratch, it is entirely possible to have those lovely long avenues of shady trees, all in perfectly straight lines….so we can roll the gilded carriages up and down without snapping branches off.

those old french kings really knew how to spend some money and make everything gorgeous as far as the eye could see.
versailles was about the maddest thing i’ve ever seen, and i’ve seen some mad things.
the whole thing reaches it’s apogee in two rooms: louis’ bedchamber and the hall of mirrors.
with the sun pouring in, it would be simply blinding.
a wise move….they had a custom of levee, when the king received visitors in his bedchamber upon arising each morning.
if louis looked anything like most other people, first thing in the morning, the blindingly beautiful room was a very cunning distraction.

we made the huge mistake of touring the dauphin’s apartments last.
o dear.
after the demented decor of the upstairs bits, the dauphin’s rooms looked positively threadbare and somewhat plain.
however, the whole experience fulfilled most of my dangerous liaisions fantasies….i think it would have been marvellous to have turned up in full pre-revolution clothes and swanned through the crowds thus.
of course, one would perish in the heat and possibly be crushed to death….but still, what a glamorous way to go.

our photos fail to capture the glories of the place….it is something that has to be experienced.
and indeed, we didn’t take a lot of photos, we were too gobsmacked.
o and the scale of versailles…..simply IMMENSE.
we knew intellectually that it was large, but when you get there and see the kilometres of lawns, it does take the breath away.

the first thing we did was take a segway tour of the park.
we’ve both wanted to try out the segway since seeing arrested development!
after a few wobbles, we were off at a smart 20 km/hour, along those avenues of shady trees.
we circled the place, and took in the grand trianon, the petit trianon (what a perfect little poem of pink and green marble that is!), the french president’s nice weekend shack (with a very discreet gendarmerie presence under the trees all around), the vineyard, marie antoinette’s play-farm, the roots of a huge tree which blew over in 1999 and under which marie antoinette liked to enjoy the shade and we got to see the palace from the other end of the lake.
it was all wonderful and the segways were huge fun.

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hi, i'm patti flynn

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