DAY SEVEN and EIGHT
Farewell Zloty. I’m at Chateau de Versailles, the brainchild of Louis 14th – a pretty decent guy who liked wearing silk pants and curling his hair – and I’ve just spent 8 bucks on a coke.
It’s outrageous, but then everything else here is too – you could spend hours in each room here and not see everything because it’s so incredibly ornate. Wherever you look there’s detail, and then there’s detail within that detail and the rooms lead off to the other rooms ad infitum (Kafkaesque, tick. Ad infinitum, tick.)
The gardens are the best part of this place though – what you see from the balcony is impressive, but when you walk down and start exploring, you see that what you saw from the top was only a small part of the whole, and there are other gardens – which are more like small parks – enclosed by perfectly manicured hedge fences, usually with an enormous statue of what, I’m guessing, are former monarchs in the centre.
I’ve got to go – will save only the best details for tomorrow.
Ps. I know this sounds crazy, but I swear Louis 14th looks like Lu in a shot of him in his hotpants on a postcard I bought. It’s too precious to send – I’ll pack and show everyone on my return. Maybe sime will mistake it for mum or miik.
