Paris -day 3: Château de Versailles

Day 3 we went to the Château de Versailles.  We were incredibly fortunate to be staying at our friends house - just a 15 min drive from Versailles, so we headed over in the morning.  We decided that the Château itself may be a bit much for the kids, seeing as you can't take a stroller, and they say to plan on two and a half hours just to walk through the thing - so we opted to take in 'just' the gardens.

The gardens are over 800 ha (~2 000  acres) with over 200,000 trees, and over 210,000 flowers planted annually.  

This - is a serious back yard.

There are dozens of fountains around the gardens which were mostly put in under Louis XIV in the late 1600's.  The fact that there were functioning fountains at this time is impressive to me in itself. 

The fact that there were so many fountains and they used so much water that there were a number of significant technological advances made just to keep these fountains running is incredible. 

Some say at the time, the fountains in the gardens of Versailles used more water than the city of Paris.

 I have no idea how a king using the public treasury in this way lead to a revolution.   

Oh well - it sure is pretty.