France Day 1: Versailles

Read the first post, On Our Way To France, here!

Sunday August 17th 

After arriving to our hotel from the airport we had about 30 minutes to put our stuff in our rooms and get ready for our tour of Versailles. I. Was. Exhausted. No sleep in what seemed like forever. Plus, I was frustrated by the fact that I couldn't contact Garrett and I was crazy hungry. Those things added together made me grumpy and the fact that I was grumpy made me even grumpier because you aren't supposed to be grumpy in France! (You didn't think someone could use the word grumpy so many times in one sentence, did you?)

Our tour guide met us in the lobby of our hotel and, after introducing ourselves, we climbed into a van and were driven to the Palace of Versailles (or in French, Chateau de Versailles).  The place began as Louis XIII's hunting lodge and then his son Louis XIV added on and transformed the site, and in 1682 moved the government of France to Versailles. Kings and Queens continued to live here and embellish the palace until the French Revolution! 

Like I said, I was incredibly hungry.

(Brittany, do you recognize the hair tie on my wrist? It went to France! : ))

After waiting in line for a little bit we finally were able to go inside. This joint was CROWDED! 

The interior of the palace was amazing. The ceilings were gorgeous!

Marie Antoinette with her doggy.

King Louis' fancy bed. I realize you can hardly see anything because it's covered by curtains, but it's King Louis' bed so we had to have a picture!

Marie Antoinette's bed and room. I was loving the floral wall paper! They kept this room dark so that the light wouldn't fade anything so it was difficult to get a picture where you could actually see the detail. There was so much gold and pink!

Proof that it was entirely too crowded. We were herded room to room like sheep. People were shoving and I may have shoved back. Hey, I was grumpy from lack of sleep and hunger, what could I do? Plus, people stunk bad! 

Also, clearly, I was having a bad hair day. That's my frizzy ponytail there.

The Hall of Mirrors was definitely my favorite room in the entire place. So fancy and beautiful! I couldn't get enough of the chandeliers. It reminded me of the Great Hall in Harry Potter. : )

Look how cute these cherub butts are!

A view of the gardens from the palace.

After touring the palace we wimped out on touring the gardens because we were all so tired.They looked pretty and I wish we hadn't had such a long day because I would have loved to see them too.

I wasn't complaining about heading back to the hotel for dinner and bed though! We had cheeseburgers in the cafe in our hotel. One of the waiters was able to finally fix the WiFi on my iPhone and I was able to get ahold of Garrett! I started crying as soon as his face popped up on my Skype screen, I was so happy to see him and let him know that we had made it safely. After talking to him I couldn't think about anything else but sleep so I finally went to bed.

First day in France complete!