Intro
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Orléans
Versailles
Orléans
Our afternoon was spent in the central district of Orléans,
a major, bustling city on the Loire. Emerging from an underground parking lot, our
first sight was of Jeanne d’Arc on her steed in the middle of
the old town square. Our first stop was the 13th century Cathedrale Sainte-Croix. The
guidebook didn’t have much to say about it,
so we were surprised to find a church so immense and beautiful.
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Particularly unusual were the tiered crowns atop the two front towers and the
intimidating height and breadth of the sculpted front doors [left]. The inside was maintained for services and well lit from
many stained-glass windows.
The largest panels depict violent scenes from the
life of Jeanne d’Arc in bright jewel colors [right]. Jeanne is revered in Orléans for
having liberated the city from English siege in 1429, thus ending The 100
Years’ War, and she visited this same cathedral to pray during those
dangerous days.
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In jarring contrast to all this history, a long walk down a
modern central
shopping street, La République, in search of Kleenex for Jan’s nose led us to
Carrefour, a
super-store comparable to Fred Meyer or Target situated in a larger,
contemporary shopping mall. The unending fluorescent-lit aisles full of gaudily
colored, modern conveniences were almost overwhelming after having spent so much
time visiting an older, simpler world, but with some effort we found the Kleenex (now why would they put
it on
the aisle with baby products?) and hurried back to the town square.
| From there we searched until we found the museum La Maison de Jeanne
d’Arc. It is located in
a tall, narrow, medieval-style house (restored) said to be the location of the home of
Jacques Boucher, where Jeanne [right, in the town square] stayed the night during her battle with the
English.
The museum contained medieval clothes and armor. |
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Miniature dioramas
accompanied by a sound and light show attempted to explain the battle for
Orléans. Unfortunately, the details of the battle were too complicated to
understand this way, although one could certainly appreciate the hours of work spent
on building such intricate recreations. The museum
also did not provide much information in English, so we didn’t learn nearly as much as we
wanted to about Jeanne.
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After Orléans, we drove north toward Paris, stopping
in Étampes for dinner at the Restaurant St. Christophe, named for the church
next door. We felt conspicuous being the only patrons in the whole
restaurant for the entire meal, although we could hear locals enjoying a soccer
match on the TV in the attached bar. We reached home—and amazingly found
street parking only blocks from Patrick’s apartment!—at 9:00.
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Château de Versailles
The next day we drove to Château de
Versailles.
It was an easy drive, but in the nearby lot where it appeared we should have
been able to park, half-full of vehicles when we arrived about 10:30, attendants
were inexplicably turning cars away. We had to drive a number of blocks
away to an underground lot, but it was a nice walk through the town, which
seemed cozy and attractive.
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A little history: The present palace of Versailles
grew as a series of envelopes enfolding Louis XIII's hunting lodge, whose low
brick front is still visible in the center.
In the 1660s, Louis Le Vau built the
first envelope, a series of wings that expanded into an enlarged courtyard, for
Louis XIV. It was decorated with marble busts, antique trophies, and
gilded roofs. He also added a great terrace on the first floor. In 1678,
architect Jules Hardouin-Mansart took over and added two immense north and
south wings and filled Le Vau's terrace to form the Hall of Mirrors, a
233-ft-long room with 17 mirrors facing 17 tall arched windows [below]. (He also added
the two-story Baroque chapel, finished in 1710.)
In 1682, Louis XIV and Marie-Thérèse
moved to Versailles. During the Sun King's reign, it became the largest
palace in Europe, housing up to 20,000 people at a time, and the center of
political power in France. |
| Louis XIV died in 1715 at age 77, and Versailles was
abandoned by the court. However, in 1722 12-year-old Louis XV moved in. Fifty
years later, L'Opéra was completed, just in time for the marriage of the future
Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, who began inhabiting the château in 1774.
In
October 1789 a Parisian mob invaded Versailles and forced the king and queen to
leave; they were executed in 1793.
In 1833, Louis Phillippe turned the château
into a museum.
The Treaty of Versailles, ending WWI, was signed in the
Hall of Mirrors [right] on June 28, 1919. |
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It seemed impossible that anything could top the large and
richly appointed Loire castles we had toured… but then we entered
Versailles.
The marble; the gilding; the silks, satins, and velvets; the vaulted
ceilings and papered walls; the mirrors; the ostrich plumes; the silver and
crystal; the busts and sculptures and paintings; the gods and kings…. Each
room (designed primarily by Charles Le Brun) was a lavish vision demonstrating to
the world the
king’s status as God’s equal.
Although we couldn’t imagine living
comfortably in such a place, and the excess also represents terrible disregard for
the king’s subjects, we also couldn’t help but gasp at the astounding magnificence of it.
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| The extensive, art-filled gardens of Versailles, redesigned
by André Le Nôtre, complement
the palace. Formally styled with
paths and groves, hedges and flower beds, pools and fountains, and a grand canal
for boating parties [right], they could probably have required about as much time to tour as the palace itself. However, late March was
not the best time to view them. No
flowers were yet blooming, and the carved marble fountains had not been turned on.
We took a brief stroll but did not go far. |
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A tram will drive guests throughout the park (for about 5 euros), but Jan
was anxious about returning the car, so we left the gardens for another time.
Driving back to Paris to return the car was challenging.
Traffic was heavy late in the afternoon. Jan missed the optimal exit from the Périphérique to reach
Montparnasse and had to take the next, which meant driving
farther to return to the car. The French drive fast and aggressively, weaving in and
out, and often the road doesn’t have any lane markings. Most tricky are
the large roundabouts, which may accommodate as many as eight entering streets
(like the Arc d’ Triomphe). However, Jan commented that unlike in the U.S.,
French drivers are courteous about letting others merge; no one rudely
blocks mergers simply out of spite, and they always give right-of-way to
vehicles entering from the right. So even though the heavy traffic appeared
chaotic, it did move.
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