Sprint through the Gardens

Before I completely leave Paris, I should mention the gardens at Versailles--don't know how I could have missed that!--the palace was okay, but the gardens were definitely the best part. To be perfectly honest I much prefer English gardens--not nearly so stiff--but for the French these certainly were beautiful. The gardens themselves are expansive, covering a good 800 hectares of land (which is a lot by the way). According to Wikipedia, here are the stats:

Size:	800 ha.
Number of trees:	200,000
Flowers planted annually:	210,000
Number of fountains:	50
Number of jets of water:	620
Surface area of the Grand Canal:	23 ha.
Perimeter of the Grand Canal:	5.57 km
Amount of piping to feed the fountains:	35 km.
Amount of water consumed by the fountains during the ‘‘Grandes Eaux’’:

Pretty crazy, right?? Now imagine trying to experience something of that size and magnitude with less than 30 minutes--yeah, that's what we tried to do. What were we thinking? Well, HOW MANY TIMES ARE YOU IN PARIS??? That's what I was thinking anyway. That and I was thinking I should have worn tennis shoes instead of a skirt, but you live and learn. So, here are some pictures from our sprint through the gardens of Versailles:

Bassin de Latone

Abduction of Persephone: Francois Girardon

Bassin d'Apollon

Okay, see what I'm talking about when I say stiff and manicured? There's a blasted stencil for the bush for crying out loud!

It is beautiful though.

Heading back to the bus after a sprint through the gardens of Versailles--quite the workout, notice the hair now up and the happy exhaustion in our faces. ;)