OK, one day at Versailles yields ridiculous amounts of photos. Unfortunately, half of the photos I took inside didn’t come out so great (blurry) – though, that did DEFINITELY help me weed down the photo count. Who really needs 900 pictures of carvings and crazy paintings anyway? haha.
Here are the highlights of the inside of the palace.
First of all, no surface, anywhere, is left unembellished. The walls had gold leaf, paintings, inlaid stonework, carvings, etc etc at every turn. The floors were mostly either a patterned laid wood floor or inset stone like granite. Pretty much every ceiling looked something like this. It really makes me wonder why the Sistine Chapel is such a big deal… Apparently lots of artists worked on scaffolding laying down…
As proud owners of a fireplace, we were also impressed by each and every fireplace we encountered. Of course, each was made of a different exotic carved stone. Plus, they were large enough to hold an entire tree:
Where the King and Queen ate while everyone else watched. (Once again, my home viewing of Marie Antoinette starring Oak’s not-so-secret Hollywood crush Kirsten Dunst came in handy to truly picture this dining set being used.)
The royal boudoir, the spot of another famous scene in the movie. Did you know, when the Queen gives birth, everyone and their brother comes along to watch it all take place in her bedroom? How fun is that! 
The famous hall of mirrors, where the beautiful people admire themselves. OK, I totally stole that quote from our travel buddy Rick Steves. Mirrors were a huge luxury at the time, so I’d imagine, even if you weren’t all that vain you’d probably still be looking in these all the time like, OMG that’s what I look like? Time for some lipo and botox!
<insert some more photos of random paintings, thrones, a billion statues and paintings of King Louis, etc etc. > OK – I’m not really going to put you through that. The palace is definitely a worthy experience and one I wholeheartedly recommend should you find yourself in Paris area (it’s about a 40 minute train/car ride from the city). So, you can see it for yourself someday. Just be prepared to feel a little like cattle, and to be elbowing at a million other tourists. You’re not the only one that wants to be here!
I guess I am reserving the Versailles gardens (not to mention the other “mini-palaces” on the grounds) for another post. But here I am, semi-relieved to be outside of the grandest homes in the world. We did the palace first in the day and really, it’s about 1/5th of everything you can see here. You don’t know whether to be in awe of it all, or finally come to the true understanding of the aggravation with the monarchy’s overindulgence that started the French revolution (of which, by the way, they make zero mention of at Versailles). So, I hope you enjoyed this highlight tour! Be back soon with more photos 
