A Tuesday in Versailles

As the title of the blog clearly states, I went out to Versailles on Tuesday. My neighbour Leo was my guide as she grew up in the city, which is about the size of Dunedin but has a cooler castle.

We queued for the Chateau in pouring rain, sheltering 2 Australians under our umbrella, and were all pretty damp by the time we got to the front. Of course the moment we were indoors the sun came out and we kind of wished that we had foregone the pricey entrance fee and settled for a wander in the immense gardens. Still it is absolutely beautiful inside and when there wasn't a fellow tourist blocking your view it was lovely. There was a phenomenal number of people there, and because there is a set route to follow you feel a little like you are being carried along in a multi-lingual river of bumbags, matching walking shoes and cameras.
It is just gob-smacking to think of the work that went into all the detail, and the thousands of people who must have toiled for years to create it. You only get to see a tiny part of the entire buildings, and even that takes forever to tramp around. You can see why they opted for chamber pots back in the day.


We finally burst back out into the sunshine and coffeed on a warm terrace. It happened to be happy hour at the local cinema, so we went to see Shrek 3 - which I really enjoyed and was made funnier by the French. Leo has just spent the last month as a waitress in a local restaurant, so we dropped in for dinner and got treated like royalty. Full of profiteroles we staggered train-wards, and on the way happened across a go-cart. Instead of going to the dump in France, you can just chuck your junk outside your house and call up some dudes who will come and collect tit for you. Thus you will often come across piles of stuff on the footpath, which is awaiting collection.
The pile we found was enormous, and from it we extracted a go-cart and had fun on the empty streets. I would have loved to take it home but storage is limited and crazy neighbour would surely have had a fit. So we drove it to Leo's house and left it as a present for her younger bro.
It was a fun day.