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There’s only one excuse for visiting Versailles on a summer weekend: to see the fountains in action. It’s too expensive to run the fountains all the time, so they’re only on for a few hours a day on weekends from April through September. (Versailles also charges admission to the gardens on these days; otherwise, entry is free.) There’s also a soundtrack of Baroque music, played by Le Concert Spirituel.

While I had enjoyed the gardens on the occasion of my earlier visit, being able to see the fountains in action made it ever so much better.

A smattering of the fountains, starting with the Apollo fountain:

The fountain in the Bosquet of the Pyramid:

The Dragon basin:

The fountain in the Bosquet de la Girandole:

There were more people in the gardens this time (surprise, surprise), and the row boat rentals were open:

Pity they don’t have paddle boats, though, like the ones at Stow Lake.

Since I was there, though, I took advantage of the opportunity to visit the Dauphin’s apartments (which I hadn’t had time for before) and the apartments of Mesdames (which are open only on weekends), as well to spend a little more time in the gardens at the Petit Trianon:

I caught the train down to Versailles yesterday.

It’s very easy to get to Versailles from the train station: it’s only a five minute walk and you just follow the flood of tourists.

Even on a weekday in the dead of winter, there were still quite a number of people in the chateau: I identifed groups of Japanese, Italian, Spanish, and Irish tourists, and that was all before I even had my ticket! It took close to four hours to cover just two of the available circuits: 1) the King’s and Queen’s state apartments and 2) the chapel and opera house. As a result, I passed on the Dauphin’s apartments in favor of wandering in the gardens and visiting the Trianons.

Once in the gardens, the crowds thinned out considerably. In part, it was likely that there was so much more space. The chilly and drizzly weather undoubtedly accounted for the rest of the diminuation of crowds: there was hardly anyone at either the Grand or the Petit Trianon.

The ornamentation of virtually every flat surface becomes cloying after a while: I wonder that the inhabitants could endure all that everlasting gold leaf! I don’t wonder at all at Marie Antoinette’s preference for the Petit Trianon.

BTW, no pictures. Sorry ’bout that, but I inadvertently set my camera to video (not sure how I managed that, mind), and the first "picture" I took ate up all the space on the memory card. It wasn’t until I got back home that I figured out what had happened. And no, I couldn’t find any usable screenshots from my video.