Two summers ago, my family traveled to France for vacation. We had a lot of fun there, and for me it came unexpectedly. When my dad told me that we were going to the Palace of Versailles, I wasn't very excited. I had never heard of it before, but I thought it was just going to be another museum. I was completely wrong!
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| The back side of the Palace. |
We took the subway from Paris, so we ended up walking a little bit to get the the palace. As we got closer, you could start to see parts of it, but once we turned the last corner, there it was. I was first blown away at it's massive size. It is larger than any building I can think of. At that moment, I knew that this just wasn't another museum. When I realized how large it was, I kept wanting to ask my dad if he thought we were going to walk around the entire thing, because I knew I was going to get tired.
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| A hallway with paintings on the ceiling. |
When we were waiting outside in line to get our tickets, I was finally able to see up close some of the details on the building itself. There were a lot of statues on the top of the building, but I could not see exactly what they were because they were so high up. There were also a ton of windows along every side of the building that I looked at. This is significant because glass was so expensive during the time that the palace was built that this showed great wealth.
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| A chandelier hanging in one of the rooms. |
When we finally got inside, I was even more amazed. Everything was decorated very extravagantly. I didn't see anything that didn't look very expensive and beautiful. Every surface that I could see was covered in some way or another. The ceilings had beautiful paintings of different scenes on them and some of the walls even had them. All the furniture was made perfectly and was very large. There were so many complex chandeliers hanging from the ceiling, too. These are significant because they were also made of glass and maybe even had candles in them during the time this palace was built.
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| A large fountain surrounded by statues. |
After walking around inside for so long, it was nice to get some fresh air outside. I had been seeing glimpses of the gardens from inside, but that didn't even begin to do them any justice. I would say that we walked around the gardens for a good hour, and didn't even cover a quarter of the gardens, that's how much land there is. Everywhere you looked, something was symmetrical. The trees, bushes, flowers, fountains. And nothing was out of place. I don't think I saw one pebble in the glass or a weed being where it shouldn't. It was all as perfect as could be.
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| A row of trees in the gardens. |
When I went to France, I had no idea what the Palace of Versailles was or the history of it at all. Now, I know that it was once a hunting lodge, but Louis XIV turned it into the magnificent palace. And I know that it could house up to 10,000 people at once. The Palace of Versailles turned out to be a pretty cool place once I gave it a chance, and I'm very glad I did.
All pictures are mine.
In loved your blog post! The writing was great and easy to follow, but the best part was the setup. The paragraphs were short which kept them from being boring, and the pictures made it really entertaining to read! I loved how you included pictures of almost everything you described, it made your post very enticing and made what you described come to life.
ReplyDeleteThis post was very interesting, especially the pictures. In class, we only saw a few pictures of Versailles, and mostly from the front. But it's really nice to look at some of the other parts of the castle. This has a very strong connection to history class. It's really cool that you've seen the palace yourself! Your title is interesting and made me want to read more. Cool post!
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ReplyDeleteThis is a great post! That's so cool that you got to go to France and see the palace in person. Your writing was very easy to follow. It was concise and well-written. There is a very clear connection to class and it was interesting to read!
ReplyDeleteI liked how you told about your initial reaction and some facts. I wished that you could have included more facts. But, overall it was great and it made me want to take a plane over to France right now just to see Versailles.
ReplyDeleteGreat job Emma! I really enjoyed reading your post. I liked how it was your personal experience.It was very well written and overall great job!
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading your blog post. I liked how it was a personal experience that connects to our history class. I also liked how you kept your paragraphs short and with a lot of pictures, you kept me interested the whole time. Your writing and pictures were extremely clear and easy to follow along with. Overall, awesome job!
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