paris, part 3

on our last day in paris, we took a train to versailles and spent the day exploring on our own. it was definitely one of my favorite days of the entire study abroad. versailles was so huge and ornate and extravagant that it's hard to come up with sufficient adjectives to describe it! we started out by walking through the palace and we obviously had to take the ultimate mirror pic in the hall of mirrors. that incredibly beautiful and ostentatious bed pictured above belonged to marie antoinette, of course. one of the reasons i loved visiting versailles is that i am so fascinated by marie antoinette and her life. i really love sofia copolla's film. i love how much it humanizes marie antoinette and shows the reality of life at versailles, and i love that it was really filmed there. it's a beautiful movie, if you haven't seen it. i also want to read the biography on which it was based, and this book that my professor recommended.

after we saw the rest of the palace, we headed outside to explore the gardens and the rest of the buildings and grounds. one of the best things about versailles is that you can rent a boat to row around the canal or bikes to ride around the grounds. we rented bikes and had so much fun riding them around. we rode to the petit trianon, which was marie antoinette's personal palace, and then we rode to her hamlet, which is an idealized french village that she would visit to escape from the responsibilities of court life. the hamlet was unreal. it was so beautiful and picturesque. there was a field where all these animals, from peacocks to pigs, were frolicking together and every little cottage and garden was picture perfect. it's pretty incredible to think that it was supposed to represent real french villages, which i'm sure looked nothing like these perfect, pretty cottages. we learned that they used to groom and perfume the animals before marie antoinette would arrive, and they would lead them around on lace leashes. that's pretty unlike any farm i've ever visited!

versailles was amazing and so much fun to see. afterwards, we headed back to paris to spend our very last night there. we were so sad to leave. paris, je t'aime! i want to come back so soon!