Lovely Views at Versailles...

I'm going to write a number of blog posts about my visit to the Royal Palace of Versailles... but to get this started, I'll begin with a few pictures I took mostly outside. To explain how much area this palace is situated on is difficult... imagine a small city, with a few giant palaces and immense gardens in between and you probably have about the right idea. I'd say it would probably take 30-50 minutes to cross from the main palace to one of the farther ends of the grounds, such as the Temple d'Amour, Domaine de Marie-Antoinette, or the Grand Trianon.

Here's the front of the palace, the side that faces the golden gate and the city...







And now for some views of the grounds behind the palace...





These gardens have to be some of the most amazing... notice how they looked back in one of the paintings I found inside the palace...




The sad thing is there were amazing amounts of other gorgeous things I didn't think of taking pictures of... and my camera/phone was running out of batteries... :(


This here is the Petit Trianon where Marie-Antoinette liked to go to escape the craziness at Versailles...




And here is the Temple de L'Amour. It sits basically on an island behind the Petit Trianon...


And the Grand Trianon where Napoleon Ier lived and later Louis-Philippe Ier...