Hi all,
Welcome to another blog with the Findlaters as we travel to different places around the world. I hope you're joining us after reading the first part of this journey which can be found at the link below as this journey is the Findlaters + Sarah (A cousin that has come to visit all the way from Australia) and we are currently half way through our journey.
http://findlatertravels.blogspot.co.uk/2018/01/new-year-new-adventures.html
Just so that you can picture how this trip went the map below shows our entire trip, including what happened in Part 1. At this point in our journey we are at the last green dot down in France and will be heading up to Belgium (Yellow Dots), across to Maastricht (brown dot) and then down to Stuttgart (Orange dot) and then a long drive back home to catch the ferry back across the channel from Dunkirk to Dover.
We pick up our Journey at the Palace of Versailles.
First things are first - you can't go to France without talking about their pastries so for breakfast in the morning Ratty decided to try a proper Chocolate Eclair at the Angelina restaurant/cafe in the palace itself. Full disclosure it was Ratty and Sarah that tried the Eclair.
So after breakfast at the palace we headed off to see the hard conditions that the royalty at the time of King Louis XIV to Louis XVI had to endure.
Above: The map of the Palace of Versailles, and the general route that we took in our wanderings around the palace grounds. Green blob is the main palace, purple blob is the Grand Trianon (a small palace), the pink blob is where the Petit Trianon (A chateau) and the Queen's Hamlet are.
A really short summary about this palace is that Versailles was the seat of political power in the Kingdom of France from 1682, when King Louis XIV moved the royal court from Paris, until the royal family was forced to return to the capital in October 1789, within three months after the beginning of the French Revolution.
If I had to summarize this palace I would say that it was so lavish that even the details have details.
Under Louis XIV, the whole senior nobility were 'pressured' to spend large amounts of time at Versailles, as a form of political control.
I (Mercedes) had been to this palace before as a teenager and the one thing that I remembered about the palace was the chandeliers! To 17 year old me they were big and shiny and that was my big take away. This trip was more for the benefit of Sarah and Kyran and I got to relive the enormity of the palace by the looks on their faces as we entered each room.
Above: The three of us with the Hall of Mirrors in the background.
Fun Fact: Versailles was to be the "showcase" of France, so all materials that went into the construction and decoration of Versailles were manufactured in France.
As a result the mirrors used in the decoration of the Hall of Mirrors were made in France.
It is important to know that Venice in the 17th century had the monopoly on the manufacture of mirrors, Colbert (the finance minister) succeeded in enticing a number of artisans from Venice to make the mirrors for Versailles. However, owing to Venetian proprietary claims on the technology of mirror manufacture, the Venetian government ordered the assassination of the artisans to keep the secrets proprietary to the Venetian Republic.To meet the demands for decorating and furnishing Versailles, Colbert nationalised the tapestry factory owned by the Gobelin family, to become the Manufacture royale des Gobelins.(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palace_of_Versailles)
Above Right: Statue of King Louis XIV
Below: Examples of the decorations that could be found in most of the rooms in the palace
After being guided through the palace you are a funneled out to the side of the palace where you have the option of either going home, or adventuring into the palace gardens.
Obviously we had to go and explore the palace gardens, so the following photos are all from the gardens around Versailles.
Above: This is one of the very well maintained gardens that you will see just as you enter the gardens from the Palace.
Below: Latona’s fountain - It illustrates the story of Latona, the mother of Apollo and Diana, protecting her children from the insults of the peasants of Lycia and pleading with Jupiter to avenge her. The god obliges by turning the inhabitants of Lycia into frogs and lizards.
The following are some of the photos that we took while walking around the 800 hectare gardens with over 200,000 trees, 50 fountains and 620 water jets (turned off for winter mostly).
Above: The love Monument for more information see http://en.chateauversailles.fr/discover/estate/estate-trianon/english-gardens#the-love-monument
Below: One of the buildings in the Queen's Hamlet
Fun Fact: The Queen's Hamlet was created by Marie-Antoinette, and it's a model village around an artificial Lake. The Queen used the hamlet as a place for relaxing walks, or to host small gatherings. The hamlet was also a functioning farm, something that the Queen insisted upon, and thus it was also served and educational role for the royal children.
If is not apparent yet, it was very cold day: there was wind,rain and humidity! Somehow we managed to time our outdoor adventures very well so that the rain fell as we were in the palace or on one occasion arrived at an undercover gazebo area just as a big rain storm hit.
The image above shows three very cold tourist! But also further in the background you can see a grass patch followed but a very wide and long channel. Well in order to go and see The Grand Trianon (A mini-palace) we had to walk half way down the channel and then turn right.
Fun Fact: The Grand Channel as it is known is 1500 meters long and 62 meters wide and was a venue for boating parties.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gardens_of_Versailles)
When all was said and done at the end of the day my Fitbit had recorded 20,775 steps for that day. So yes we were cold and we were tired! But it was a very nice place to visit, and I would like to come back again in the summer to see the full beauty of the gardens when they are not so naked and even take two days to see the place properly and take full advantage of the immense details and history that surrounds Versailles.
The following photos are from the Grand Trianon:
It is here that I would like to interject on the above photo and ask: at which point do you say "I'm tired i'm going to bed, but you fellows can keep playing cards, i'll be over there"? If I was the Queen I would have said "I'm going to bed bugger off". I just can't really imagine a scenario where you would be in bed and every one else just socializing all around you!
I believe that this brings us to the end of our adventures in the Palace and grounds of Versailles. It has been hard to summarize such grandeur and opulence into such a small (or not so small) part of this blog, but alas the adventure continues and we must move on!
In the two seconds that we had to take from our busy tour as I was at risk of Kyran and Sarah starting a Coup on me as I had hardly given them any time to eat, or in fact anything to eat, we managed to stop by a french supermarket and see what the French eat.
In case it is not clear by the photos YES that is 3 varieties of snails and sea urchins, we didn't see any frogs legs though!
The following day it was time to head towards Maastricht where we had to leave Sarah and Ratty for her studies but we tried to catch as many sights as we could along the way.
Below: First on our way was the monument at Waterloo. This might be familiar to you as a song by ABBA and yes this is where Napoleon did surrender.
Fun Fact: When Napoleon surrendered at Waterloo he had already been the first Emperor of the French and abdicated as Emperor where he was exiled to the Island of Elba near Rome. He then escaped the island and took control of France for a second time and raised a new army and went back to war. At the battle of Waterloo he lost to the mixed-European and British coalition forces, where he again surrendered and this time was exiled to another island Saint Helena which is out in the South Atlantic ocean. If that isn't some Captain Jack Sparrow adventure I don't know what is (Pirates of the Caribbean reference).
I guess here is as good a place as any to put a homage to the way that my family traveled when we were young. I mean traveling with four children and both parents around the world was not easy nor cheap so this is how we learned to eat while traveling.
Bread and tomatoes, if we were lucky there was cheese or chips! but so that Kyran and Sarah could have the 'full experience' I made them the good old travel food of the family!
I feel that I might have let them have food that was too gourmet! A toasted sort of crouton bread with a Spanish style garlic rubbed on it + tomatoes +hummus + chips + grilled peppers/capsicum + asparagus. So perhaps a little more than what we had as kids, but as I mentioned before I was at risk of a mutiny so I needed to sweeten them up again.
Next up was the Atomium it is a landmark building in Brussels, originally constructed for the 1958 Brussels World's Fair (Expo '58). It is located on the Heysel Plateau, where the exhibition took place. It is now a museum. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomium)
This was a quick stop as we were now running late to get Sarah to her induction, so alas we did not get to go into the Atomium but like the Eiffel tower it was impressive all on its own. From the shear size and the fact that people can go up in those spheres and that there is escalators between them. Also I forgot to mention that the Atomium is actually a unit cell of an iron crystal magnified 165 billion times!
Next up was the goodbyes to Sarah once we arrived in Maastricht. It was a quick good bye as we had to head another 5 hours drive to Germany to visit some old friends of Kyran and I from university/post-university.
We headed down to Stuttgart and arrived at ~9pm, we had a few drinks and caught up on life.
The next day we all decided to head off and see if we could take a hike in the Black Forest somewhere. First up as a stop in this little town called Calw for the coffee enthusiasts to get their fix, and see the super-cute medieval style buildings everywhere.
Below: It is also where I tried my first proper German Pretzel, it was good so 10 out of 10 would do again!
Below: Picture below some of the old style buildings.
We went to the local tourist information center in the town and they suggested we go up to the Sommerberg in Bad Wildbad to get a good look at the Schwarzwald ("Black Forest") with the tree-top observatory there called the Baumwipfelpfad.
Fun Fact: The black forest was almost completely cleared during the medieval times for fuel and building material, potash and charcoal. Later, Spruce trees replaced Fir trees and Beech trees because Spruce were faster growing. Now they have a more biodiverse flora with Silver Fir, common Beech, and Spruce. Nowhere else in Germany are there such distinct forest communities left as in the Black Forest.
The Black Forest is in the south-western part of Germany, and you can see the mountain ranges and the curly mist in the background.
We approached the observation tower. It's nearly 40 meters high with an epic slide down the middle, but while we were there the slide was closed. Overall, the tree-top walk that lead to this area was pretty interactive. There were activity stations spaced along the walk. At one station there was a bird feeder hanging off a tree, where we managed to take a photo of this cute red squirrel eating sunflower seeds. 
Once we had seen the Black Forest and spent time with our friends, it was time to get going as we had to catch the ferry the next day at 12 o'clock. The only problem was, that Dunkirk was a solid 7 hour road trip away! So we drove until 11pm and managed to get a hotel right near the ferry terminal in Dunkirk, along the "Grande Synthe" area.
Funny story: After a day at the Black Forest with rain.. more rain.. and cold, and sitting in the car on our journey with our sub-par car which doesn't have a working heater.. we slowly deteriorated through the phases of hypothermia and had to rely on one disposable heat pack (typically for putting in your shoes) - where Kyran had one stuck on his leg and alternate hands to keep warm, and poor me (normally colder than a frog's bum) had the second one trying to alternate between both hands and feet and latter on stealing Kyran's one and using what was left of his at the same time! We also had the coats that we were wearing but they were still soaking wet so they were of little use. Not being able to stand the cold and possible hunger any longer, we found the closest supermarket and decided to get some food to enable us to handle our life and the rest of the drive back towards the ferry terminal.
The photo below is of the meal we had that night at a truck stop, after stopping at a Lidl (like an Aldi) for supplies on the way up through Germany. This is where I decided that if the Bar Tender on the Titanic didn't freeze to death from being drunk, then perhaps a pair of fluffy socks and a small bottle of wine would help stave off the cold. I'm here to tell you that yes indeed alcohol does warm the blood and did managed to keep me alive till I got to the Hotel and could have a warm shower and be human again! Now I know I promised a funny story, but I live in the hopes that this will be funnier as time goes on because at the time I thought that "this is where I die!"
So I guess this is a reminder to away pack warm, have a car that the heater works in and know that we don't eat like kings on the road, but the food we eat is still better then most restaurants!
Well we made it to the ferry with plenty of time the next morning - they even checked our boot for possible human trafficking! (At least I think that is what they were looking for). We cross the channel and made it home by mid-day on saturday and spent the rest of the day sleeping.
Below: All the cars on the ferry
This leads us to the next blog where we adventured to Hampton Court Palace back in England where Henry VIII was a main character, and this palace shows similarities to the Palace of Versailles but we will leave the details for the next blog!
Thanks again for reading and following along on our adventures, this adventure was made possible due to the generosity of one of our readers! We would like to take the time to thank you for your contributions and we hope that you enjoyed reading about our adventures as much as we enjoyed having them.
paypal.me/findlatertravels
Also if there is anything that is around where we are and you want us to see it/review it please do let us know! we would love to hear from you. Send us an email at:
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