The Garden of Overrated and Fountains

The line for the Palace of Versailles, as we had been warned by the guidebooks, was quite lengthy.  So we headed first for the Gardens, behind the palace.  There are a ton of fountains there, and lots of greenery, but not much in the way of flowers.  While it is huge and somewhat overdone, it's also not as pretty as the Schonbrunn palace gardens we visited in Vienna two years ago. 

The main fountain (Latona) is undergoing restoration, so that also took a bit away from it.  We were there in time for the fountain show, which occurs only on weekends and Tuesdays.  That part of it was pretty neat. 

The plan had been to take a tour of Paris on Monday (foreshadowing), and since we didn't know what we would do on the tour (more foreshadowing: moot point!), Carol came up with the smart idea to hit Versailles on Sunday after landing.  Yes we would be tired, but you have to push through it or else it gets tough to acclimate to the jet lag/time changes (six hours difference).

Anyhow, we walked through the gardens, finding shade where we could.  After heading down to the back-up main fountain (the Apollo Ornamental lake) and the Grand Canal.  From there, we walked the longer way then necessary to the Grand Trianon -- a small palace kind of out of the way (as out of the way as a small palace gets) -- but it was 11:30 and it did not open till noon!  So, the Gardens open at 8, the main Chateau at 9, but the Trianons (Frand and Petit) don't open till noon?

Oh well.  We cut through an angled path to the Grand Canal and had lunch nearby it.  Hopefully, it is the worst meal we have in France.  We did not expect much, eating at a restaurant on the Palace grounds, and it did not even meet those low expectations (except it did meet our expectations of high prices).  The problem was, we were trapped.  It would take thirty minutes or so to walk back to town to a "real" restaurant, although I'm skeptical how real it could be -- just another tourist trap (don't worry -- my biennial rant about how the Euro has ruined the affordability of Europe is coming).  At least by the canal we received some cool breezes.

We wandered around some of the side gardens, careful to stay in the shade until we got to the path of the three fountains, the Dragon Fountain, and Neptune's Fountain. 

It was time. . .time to hope that the line to get into the Chateau wasn't  very long.  However, when we got back to the front of the line, it might as well of read, "Hope dies here."