We got ready for the day relatively early on Wednesday and travelled by train to Versailles, seated near a man who I could not shake as a French Billy Collins. He looked for all the world like Billy’s identical twin.
At Versailles, I was consistently struck with one historical question: “How did the French monarchy ever fall?”
The last serious treatment I would have received of this was likely late high school or early college and I remember nothing. I would now like to get the best history available on the French Revolution and pour over it.
The interior of the palace at Versailles was interesting, but secular interior space or decoration has never intrigued me much. (Interesting.)
After touring the interior, we had lunch at a small cafe in the gardens, where the real experience of Versailles began for me.
The gardens were just amazing. The overwhelming scale of the grounds themselves, the little tucked away fountains, the gardeners running here and there pruning, and the very idea of living with this as your backyard!
The map below represents the thin area of the gardens we were actually able to explore in a mere five hours after lunch.
The wonder of wonders at Versaille, however, did not come until the final discovery of the late afternoon -- the Hameau de la Reine. This is the retreat that Marie Antoinette (which whom I have never been more sympathetic) had built in the corner of Versailles to escape the nasty torments of the pre-Revolution French court.
The grounds are a stunning retreat -- gardens in the English style, buildings made to resemble country cottages, vegetable gardens, animals. This was one of the most traditionally beautiful places we visited on the entire trip.
More pictures will appear in the “Best of Gardens” photo album.
After returning home on the train, we spent a little time in the the Quarteir Latin, encountering a hilariously aggressive clown, who reminded me a little bit of a French version of my good friend, John Vogel. He would walk up right behind people and grab them on the heel, make some noise, etc. As with the Bushman of San Francisco, the delight is in watching people’s reaction to his ambushes (no pun intended)
Nora was the only one who was willing to approach him and give him a Euro.
Day 07 Reflections
Reflection One: I go back and forth between viewing this French Revolution as a necessary evil or just an evil, but would never celebrate it.
Reflection Two: This is as good a time as any to mention Japanese tourists and their “photographic” habits.
They became, as the vacation progressed, something of my nemeses. There were everywhere! As I attempted my own meditations on the proper function of photography and its integration into the genuinely human experience of a place and time, there would be one snapping her own shot in front of a famous statue; there would be another gathering his friends in front of a rather unremarkable view; there would be a group of three moving through a room in a museum like grinning public assassins.
For quite some time I was incensed by their attitude towards capturing images. It represented to me the absolute triumph of losing the experience of the place for the sake of recording it. Sometimes I wondered if they literally even saw where they were at or were aware of what they were doing.
This is the great existential risk of the camera -- to trade experiencing the quality of being in a place for recording the mere fact of having been there. The triumph of the static over the the dynamic, the chloroform of reality.
To be continued.
Click below to watch the slideshow or double click for more options. If you cannot navigate the slideshow, click here to go directly to the album.
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