After an entire week in Paris, I cannot begin to explain how we left the big city and drove into the countryside minus a GPS, sim card and 3G but we did. We never seemed to have a spare second to do anything truly practical (this may have been my influence), too much time singing in the rain I guess. So we left on the back foot, and the day we collected the car in Paris will stay with me forever.
Having left the Europcar desk with our Renault Clio and having managed to convince the assistant that no, we did not want to take her up on her offer of a truck, Gary hurriedly dropped me at the hotel to collect our bags (which were about to be tossed on the street after we exceeded our late check-out) and was going to do a simple U-turn and park outside on the curb. 45 minutes later Gary had circled both the left and right banks of Paris and done a full city-scape tour against his will. With no time to spare for frivolous extras like groceries or the abovementioned electronic goods, we headed out in our vehicle to begin the true meandering journey of ‘Embrace the Detours’.
Between Gary driving on the right-hand side of the road in a manual diesel vehicle (not his usual style) and my outstanding navigational skills, we doubled back on ourselves on every highway but eventually managed to make our way to our first stop – the incredible town of Versailles.
The Palace of Versailles is one of the most spectacular palaces in the world, and was home to some of the most interesting and controversial characters in French and world history, such as the Sun King Louis the 14thth and Marie Antoinette and King Louis the 16th. Having arrived in the town late on Wednesday evening, we decided to tackle the crowds and the mammoth Palace the following day.
Having had a quick espresso in a café across from the ‘Front National’ offices next to a man who looked suspiciously like Le Pen, slightly awkward once again (how do we keep getting ourselves in these situations?), we spent the rest of the day trying in vain to absorb all the beauty, splendour and spectacular excess of the Palace and its grounds along with the incredible and varied history of the buildings and its occupants via our trusty audio guides. The real gem is of course the immaculately, almost with surgical precision, manicured gardens, labyrinths and walkways draw you in and we could easily have lost ourselves there for days.
There is not much to say about the Palace itself that hasn’t already been written about countless times before – the statues of Apollo and Mars, the Room of Mirrors, the chandeliers, the portraits, it is all too much to believe. We were both particularly drawn to the Petit Trianon, a small chateau located in the grounds of the Palace of Versailles which once formed part of Marie Antoinette’s estate. The whimsically decorated rooms, flowerbeds, fountains and facades do not have the gold-leafed grandeur of the Palace but gave you a real feel for what it must have been like to actually live in Versailles all those hundreds of years ago. Although very beautiful and removed from the hustle and bustle of the courts, the buildings also reminded me of the loneliness of the women of the Palace who, although criminally indulged in every way, were mostly forced into lives which must have been very constrained, sad and unnatural. A place of escape, you don’t need to stretch your imagination too far at the Petit Trianon to experience a time slip and picture Marie Antoinette strolling through the walkways and gazebos.
Next to the sheer wealth of the place and its past inhabitants, another striking point about Versailles is the realization that not many lessons have been learnt from its history. It is no wonder that a leadership surrounded by sculptures and paintings of mythological heroes falsely recast as part of their own heritage and divine right to rule could be so utterly out of touch with the people and the reality of life under their rule but, in various contexts, this type of phenomenon still plays out in the world today. It struck us both that the continued disparity between classes in societies which has shaped so much of world history has still not been solved and changing these kinds of social structures and realities is a responsibility which weighs heavily on each generation.
That evening, Gary and I walked through the town which surrounds the Palace, a quaint old village which has expanded into a fully-fledged city today and has quite a few charming areas and sights to see, such as the fish and herb markets in the centre.
But we were off the following morning towards the Loire Valley to find a place for Shabbat …
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