Inside, the crowding was utterly insane: a quarter of the people would have been too many. We flowed, like lumps in a river of molasses, around the pre-set route of the Royal apartments, essentially unable to see anything. Also, due to dim-witted organization, unable at any point to say, in our perfect colloquial French, "sod this for a lark" and get out.
There's a "Jeff Koons at Versailles" exhibit going on - an inflatable lobster entitled "Laughing all the Way to the Bank," two inflatable turtles entitled "Just How Pathetically Gullible are Rich People in the Art World Anyway?" - and so on - all of which we half viewed over the heads of other blobs of molasses. See picture #2.
Cardinal Richelieu, with whom I found myself briefly in conversation, did not look amused by this invasion of the damp global peasantry. The guidebooks said Louis played host to 6,000 courtiers and 5,000 servants here: no wonder it once seemed civilised.
We managed to take all this absurdity in our stride, and it was a good day out in the end - even funny, in a perverse way. Third pic is A+D sliding on the ice that covered everything. Fourth is damp K eating damp pastry on train. Another time, perhaps, in the spring...
Back at the apartment, our corner grocer says snow is sweeping up from the south.
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