Our second day in Paris and my wife, daughter and I took a day trip to Versailles… another stop on Mollie’s well-thought-out dream list.
I had never been to Versailles before… wait… wow… my nostrils are really uneven, aren’t they? I made the joke in the title because this place really is astoundingly, jaw-droppingly beautiful.
Of course that means that Mollie and I took a lot of pictures there… so prepare yourselves…
It is sort of hard to wrap your head around that place.
It is just pure, over-the-top, unadulterated excess…
If you see gold on something… even just the fence… you can bet it is real gold…
I mean, it isn’t solid gold… for the most part… but it is real gold covering the things that aren’t solid gold.
And this brings up another point, because as clever as my title is, the sheer beauty of the place isn’t the only thing about it that can make you sigh.
I can see how the starving peasants might have let out sighs of frustration and despair when they walked past these types of things on their way to a hard day of… not having anything to eat and slowly starving to death.
Even though Marie Antoinette never actually said; “Let them eat cake” the idea of living this lavish lifestyle while those around you toiled, starved and died in the filth and mud did sort of imply that very idea.
And this frustration slowly built up…
And the rage eventually boiled over…
And the people rose up and came to drag the rich people out of their golden palaces… (something to think about, all you ultra-wealthy individuals who are doing everything you can to buy elections and rig the system so that you get to keep more and more and less and less trickles down, because the poor people in this country are, thanks in large part to the same politicians you buy and pay for, very heavily armed… and it didn’t end well for the 1% during the French Revolution, oh no)…
Pouring My Art Out 
Wow, gorgeous, er, Versailles, not your nostrils. 😉
I know… dang it…
Isn’t that amazing? Just mind-boggling. It makes the excesses of our nouveau riche look penny ante.
and I ain’t done yet… wait till you see the yard
That’s too funny – I wrote a comment on the “yard” and when I came back here you had mentioned it – great minds think alike.
well you can’t very well have a house like that without an equally over-the-top yard, can you?
I suppose. When you have other kings over for a BBQ brunch, there has to be a comfortable place to do it. Ha!!
uh… yes
It is quite a place, isn’t it.
But the nuvo-riche in the US are actually building one here. I kid you not. I wrote about it ages ago. http://fiftyfourandahalf.com/2012/04/24/careful-its-catching/ It was nixed in that particular location, and is currently being built in the same town a few miles away. Can you say clueless? Can you say more money than sense?
Can you say guillotine?
Yes. But it is harder to spell!
I got it right the first time…