Another château.......... a little further afield

8/4/13 Monday
Last week we did the maths and decided it was worth our while to get a 4-day Paris museum pass - this after much discussion about what we wanted to see and do and whether we wanted to be tied in to 4 consecutive days of museum and monument hopping. In the end we made a 4-day plan and decided to bite the bullet. The intention was to start tomorrow and give ourselves another day of getting psyched for the onslaught, but the weather forecast for this week is looking a bit grim.  So when we wake to a fine (but cloudy) day today we decide to bring the plan forward, change it up a bit and get on out there! Ok, here goes........ first stop Château de Fontainebleau.
This is our first trip outside of Paris and we catch the train at Gare de Lyon, just a short walk from home. The journey is only 40 minutes or so, followed by a 15 minute bus ride. The driver lets us off in the main street of Avon-Fontainebleau - hang on, can this be right? Where's the château?? We follow the herd, cross the street .......... the signs are not that clear....... oh, that must be because this isn't the grand entrance but the Jardin de Diane (side entrance). Never mind, the garden view that greets us is green and lovely (after weeks of bare wintry trees in Paris) so we don't bother walking up to the main gate but take the garden paths - nice!!

The château, when we finally find it, is spectacularly, obscenely huge, it's almost more than the eyes can take in at one time, especially from the other (lake) side. I have no doubt that our cameras won't be able to come close to capturing what we see, it's an incredible panorama - one of the biggest chateaux in France and the only one to have been inhabited by all of France's sovereign rulers, from the 12th to the 19th century - Francis I, Henry IV, Napoleon I, Napoleon III.........the list goes on. It has over 1500 rooms and sits on an estate of 130 hectares......... wow, we just don't understand that sort of extravagant wealth in Australia!!! ;-)
We hook in to our audioguides (so much simpler than a Nintendo thingy....) and set off to tour the château and learn some of the history. My history buff husband has this to say about our day:

We are proudly Frenchy with our pronunciation, Sacre-bleu! Fontaine......bleu! Only to be humiliated when the English audioguide pronounces it "fontain-blow". What?? All these weeks of talking through our noses wasted? It's hard to take, hard to change, and still a source of chagrin for us, newlywed to the skills of hand throwing and eye rolling in the purest of Frenchy tradition. "Blow" indeed!!

I find Napoleon's rooms the most interesting parts of the fortress palace.  The long line of French royalty were middle ages, an era of no interest to any of us, not long enough dead to be really dusty and interesting, far too dead to have any aroma in our time. At not quite 200 years dead, Bonaparte still has a strong whiff going on. To stand in his office, take a sneaky stroke of the carpet he pranced on, and check out his big ol' Napoleonic desk is a real treat for the nostrils (so to speak).

From the bottom of the horseshoe stairs he made his awesome (I'm reliably told) speech before being exiled to Elba. It would have been heartfelt - the idea of fulfilling the apophthegm "todays rooster is tomorrow's feather duster" must have been galling. (Yes, I'm showing off. An apophthegm is a short cryptic remark containing some general or generally accepted truth or maxim. From the Greek: apophthegma; from apophthengesthai: to speak one's opinion........ So I could have worked apophthengesthai in instead, sorry......) ;-)

Our recent Hollywood encounter with Marie-Antoinette didn't prepare us to find her here as well, but voila! there's her bed chamber, still decorated to her specifications. Sadly she never got to slumber beneath her dreamy ceiling before the revolution ended her reign (and, more importantly for her, her life........). The pleasure of sweet repose dans cette chambre went to Josephine - swings and roundabouts I guess, since she had to give up that jewellery cabinet to Napoleon's next wife........

One of the bedrooms is frankly over the top and I think I'd find it very difficult to get a relaxed night's sleep with so much going on in there. Maybe that's where the hanky panky took place (and I'm sure there was plenty!) and the peaceful sleeping happened elsewhere......... ;-)

The place is opulent, extravagant, not a hint of humility. Mistresses housed with the family, even accommodated in the crest on the wall in the ballroom, cleverly designed so it could be either wife or favourite "other". I state the bleeding obvious to mon cher: "they really loved themselves, didn't they". Meanwhile, back in the villages, the peasants were keeping themselves busy........

The grounds of the château are vast and it's easy to imagine the royals strolling amongst the trees, enjoying the lakes and grassed areas at what was originally the front grand entrance to the property. We stroll too, beyond the lakes to the edge of the forest to try and capture this panorama. The ducks and swans on the lakes have probably lived here for generations too, their great great great grandfathers would have a tale or too to tell, I'm sure.