Paris - Palace of Versailles

A short train ride outside Paris proper is this ridiculously opulent palace used by King Louis XIV (and his less impressive successors Louis XV & XVI).
The palace is immense and gold (paint) is everywhere. To skip the lines, we went on a guided tour that actually turned out to be excellent, going into the king's private rooms (away from the throngs of tourists), seeing fancy science gadgets and his private theatre (all wood, but pretend stone etc, #2).
Later, saw the chapel (the small part of the palace not devoted to the glory of the Sun King, #3), tons of amazing roof frescoes/carvings often blending into each other (#4) the hall of mirrors (#5), and expansive manicured grounds (#6).
You can really see why revolutionists thought the rulers were spoilt!

We had tickets to also see the Grand Trianon and Marie Antoinette's estate but unfortunately it had just closed when we wandered over there :( Kinda annoying that the opening times weren't posted anywhere. We peered over the wall and listened to Rick Steves audio guide anyway.もっと詳しく