The Palace of Versailles, Versailles, Île-de-France, France

Any home that has an entrance gate of gold like this is clearly going to be a different sort of place.

Located about 20 km/12 mi southwest of Paris, The Palace of Versailles was the seat of French government and home of kings from the 1680's until the revolution in 1789.

Versailles, originally a more modest hunting retreat, grew over the years into the grandest chateau in France, it was also a location where one of the World War 1 peace treaties was signed. Today it is a very popular tourist destination.

It certainly exceeded my expectations for grandeur and ostentation. In fact, to see the way royalty lived when so much of the population experienced the opposite end of the spectrum is clearly an indicator of the practices of the wealthy of that time that contributed to the causes of the French revolution in 1789.

The Hall of Mirrors.

The Hall of Mirrors. (Panorama - click on image to view full width).

The Hall of Mirrors - a floor level view.

The Queen's bed-chamber.

A random corridor.

The Hall of Battles. Each panel portrays a different battle in chronological order. (Panorama - click on image to view full width).

Another random corridor.

All this walking created a big appetite (at the end of the day my step counter showed 12,700 steps), so we decided to eat on site at the fancy restaurant in the chateau.

We had a wonderful lunch at the restaurant, "Angelina," which for me included a salad and the most perfectly prepared French green beans (haricots-verts) I may have ever eaten and, when the dessert tray was brought around......we opted for the red-circled choice above - one order, two forks.

........ we could not resist a slice of "Napoleon." Sadly, it was not vegan but, we ate it anyway.

I began this post with gold, and so too I will end it that way - a typical ceiling detail.

Leaving Versailles at 5:15pm on a Friday evening and getting on a busy freeway packed with commuters was, in hindsight, not the best of planning on my part but, oh well, I got to experience the motorcycle mania that occurs here. Motorcycles by the hundreds speed along between lanes, barely missing the side-view mirrors on the cars, darting in and out in any and all kinds of traffic conditions - it is wild! (I don't know if it is legal or not but, it occurs every day at any time so I'm guessing it is accepted behavior). It took two full hours (in a car) to go 60 km/36 miles in stop-and-go traffic just like in any major metropolitan area in the world but, it included the 'motorcycle show' including one scene when two motorcyclists stopped side-by-side in the middle of a lane and gesticulated wildly at each other, almost coming to blows - such drama!