Château de Fontainebleau

     On Saturday the weather was gorgeous (cloudy, but in the upper 60's!) so my friends and I decided to take the free weekend train to see the royal palace at Fontainebleau. It was about a 45 minute train ride from Paris, and then we arrived in the surprisingly large town where the palace is located. I actually liked this castle MUCH more than I liked Versailles - tons of rooms were open for us to walk through, there weren't nearly as many people, and the security guards weren't as uptight, which meant we got to wander and touch things that we probably shouldn't have. This palace was just another huge royal residence, but Napoleon I also visited it several times, so the museum inside has lots of Napoleonic elements. 

First view of the courtyard. 

This main outdoor staircase is the castle's most distinctive feature.

This diorama gives an overview of the complex. 

 Random giant vase used as a decoration. Unlike Versailles, this residence wasn't quite as much of a symbol of the monarchy. During the revolution, many items were still looted from the palace, but many of them were also returned afterward, which means that tons of furniture and artwork were on display. 

 Golden chess table. 

 One of the rooms was full of Napoleon's personal things that he took with him when he was on campaign. This box was labeled as "essential toiletries." Looks like a lot for wartime!

 Napoleon's "necessary" knife kit. What could you possibly use that many knives for??

Just some fancy pants armor. 

My friends and I couldn't figure out why one man needed so many swords, especially considering the fact that if you only have two hands you can only use a maximum of two swords at once. Common sense here people.

I really liked this room - the wallpaper was really cool (in this picture it looks kind of tacky, and I will admit that it was excessive, but I still liked it!). Also, that piece of furniture right there is actually a crib. Louis XIII was born in this château, as well as other minor members of the French aristocracy throughout the years, and one future queen of Spain.  

Another fancy crib.

Just like Versailles, this château also had a gallery with busts of famous French men.  

One of the rooms we got to see was called the "Gallery of Plates." Apparently when your house is that big you run out of things to decorate with, so the entire room had fancy plates hung on the walls as decorations. 

This is a full view of the Plate Gallery. You can see there are also some paintings, and if you look closely you can see the little glass-covered panels with plates behind them. 

A close-up of the paintings. 

Before I visited the palace I read up on a few of the more interesting rooms. This gallery is known as the Francis I gallery, because King Francis I had it expanded and decorated to satisfy his specific tastes. And since he was king he had a bit of a problem understanding the concept of sharing, so once the room was finished he decided it would only be for his private use. When he was in residence here he wore the key around his neck at all times to make sure he could keep everyone else out.

View from one of the windows in the gallery. 

The next four pictures are of one particularly pretty room in the palace, with close-ups of some of the decorations.

This room had a display of the fancy bronze and bejeweled pieces that the Spanish monarchy gave to the French monarchy as a gift at some point. All I could think of when i walked in was how this looks exactly like the table where they sing "Be Our Guest" in Beauty and the Beast. 

Close-up of some of the pieces. Right after this the security yelled at me and said you weren't allowed to take pictures in this room, but I promise there was a candlestick holder that looked exactly like Lumiere and a clock who looked exactly like Cogsworth, the characters in Beauty and the Beast. I'm convinced this castle was the inspiration for the movie. 

The next three pictures are of the ballroom! Now that the palace is a museum, they always play recordings of chamber music (string quartets, or maybe string ensemble) in this room. No one else was there, so of course we pretended to dance around for a while. Again, we were really happy the security was relatively lax. I definitely touched all the wood paneling in the walls, no one stopped me. 

There's a balcony in this room! I can picture myself as a princess, walking in fashionably late and waving at everyone from my private balcony. I would run this town. 

This is the ceiling to the smaller chapel in this palace. 

As you can see, it's not actually small at all but it is relatively plain. 

More pictures of cool but relatively unimportant rooms and furniture...

This is the personal bedroom of the queen. Over the years, several queens (and one empress) lived here.

The queen's study...

...and her desk!

We were all surprised when we stumbled upon this "throne room." The decorations are fancy, but the throne itself looks kind of small, right?

This is the king's personal bedroom - notice how much smaller his bed is than the queen's!

He also had a "small bedroom" right next door, in case he felt like sleeping in this bed instead. Not sure what the point of that is. 

This was the first time I ever got to see an actual bathroom in one of these stupid châteaux! It's a bit hard to see, but those gold things on the wall are faucets of some sort, and that tiny thing is a tub!

At one point my friend Kate and I were lingering on a staircase, the security guards told us several times (in French) that the exhibit continued downstairs, we understood them but we realized we had lost our friend Kevin. When we went back to find him we discovered him standing in front of this giant clock, he was amazed by it. After we sassed him for the necessary amount of time, we asked why it was so interesting. It's impossible to really tell from the picture, but each of those little circles tells you something different. The clock tells you the hour of the day, day of the week, month of the year, zodiac sign, season, moon cycle, and several other things. We had to admit that it was pretty cool.

Palace of Versailles

    On Saturday my friends and I visited the Palace of Versailles, and although it was pretty cool, it was actually also a perfect example of why you shouldn't fall into tourist traps. Being one of the most famous historical sites in the Paris area, Versailles is of course a must-see. I will admit that if it had been one of my first experiences with French art and architecture, I would have been extremely impressed. And I will also admit that it is gorgeous and I think everyone should go if they get the chance, but my friends and I all agreed that in comparison to all the other more "hidden" treasures in Paris, Versailles might fall a bit flat. At its peak, the palace was home to literally thousands of nobles, courtesans, and workers. But after making our way through the packed rooms that were on display, you got the feeling that you were being ripped off. There's no way we got to see more than 10% of that castle (I looked it up afterwards - there are 2,300 rooms. But we made it through everything that was on display in probably about an hour). The rooms we did see were also generally quite grotesque; they crossed the line from being extravagantly beautiful to being gluttonously extravagant. Even if we did only see just a small fraction of the building, it's not difficult to understand why the French people would revolt against the kind of leadership that would create such a beautiful travesty. Anyway, I apologize for the negative rant - here are some pics!

I'd be willing to bet that this statue of the king (it's either Louis XIV, who was essentially responsible for building the palace you see today, or Louis XVI, who was the last monarch before the Revolution, i don't remember which) is not original. During the Revolution, the palace was repeatedly sacked, either by mobs or by the new government, who sold many pieces of art and government property to raise money and pay debts. 

 This was our first view of the front of the palace. It was surprisingly not that impressive, although we later discovered that is because the REAL view of the palace (aka the gorgeous one you see in pictures) is actually the back side, where the gardens are. 

 On each side of the main entrance, the palace is marked with the phrase "à toutes les gloires de la france" - to all the glories of France. This basically is a recognition of the fact that today the palace is supposed to be a physical representation of France's power, rather than a memory of the oppressive monarchy.

 Once we got inside the main gates, things started getting fancier by the minute. 

Everything in the interior courtyard is coated with gold.

First staircase into the castle.

This is the chapel, it's basically a full-sized church! Notice how it has its own organ??

These galleries seemed to be the main way to get around the castle. They're all lined with statues of famous French men - kings, writers, philosophers, etc. 

 These are just some random photos of some of the rooms, there's nothing really that notable about them (but they're pretty). 

 I really like how well I managed to capture this room. As well as the man in the corner. 

 Fancy artwork built into the salons!

These rooms with the red wallpaper were probably one of the most garish things I've seen in France so far. 

 Everyone always talks about the hall of mirrors, but I've never seen any pictures that really show off how amazing the ceiling is! Check it out. 

 Obligatory shot of the hall of mirrors. 

 This was the king's bedchamber.

 I can't help but wonder if these are actually gold, or if they're just replicas. Chances are that if anything got sold during the revolution, it would be giant, useless gold decorations. 

 This is the queen's bed; notice how much bigger and prettier it is than the king's.

 Fancy table setting.

 This room was actually pretty cool, it was full of portraits of famous French men. 

 This room finally got my attention - it was probably my favorite room in the whole palace. It's called the Gallery of Battles, and pretty much every single battle that France won in the last 800 years is depicted in its own giant painting. 

This is an example of one of the paintings - the Battle of Hohenlinden (I just picked a random one that didn't happen to have 20 people standing in front of it, check out the sign with the name and date below).

Finally, the gardens! They're of course in the traditional French style, which means they're huge and very well-manicured. 

They're also full of artwork! The current exhibit had a bunch of huge marble slabs with trees carved into them. It's a little bit difficult to see, but the artist generally tried to carve along with the veins that already existed in the marble. If you look closely, you can see that the bottom of the tree trunk in this one is really growing out of a darker vein in the stone. 

 The paths were huge and gorgeous, we probably spent more time walking in the gardens than we did in the actual palace. 

 After wandering through the gardens for a while we finally made it to the Petit Trianon, which was a relatively long walk away. Basically it's just a small mansion where Marie Antoinette used to love living in when she wanted to get away from all the "stress" of court life. 

Some of her tableware. 

View of the courtyard from inside the house, you can see how much plainer it is. 

Well, except for the golden staircase.

 And the chandelier. 

 Also I don't exactly have a harp in my living room either. 

 The bed is much smaller than the one in Versailles though!

This was the livery that her servants wore. 

Finally, the fountains! They actually are turned off most of the time, but we happened to be there during the short period when they turned them on just to show off. This is the famous Neptune fountain. 

 A closer view. 

Image of the palace from the backside, it's much prettier in my opinion.

And that's about it! It was a good afternoon overall, despite being a little bit of a letdown. I do have to say that my favorite places in Paris so far are generally the places that DON'T have a million people crowding around, so maybe my problem with Versailles was really just a factor of my dislike of crowds. Either way, it wasn't a bad day at all.