What would you do if you had could spend half the gross national product on your home?

With such an unfettered budget, you could do worse than follow a path similar to France's King Louis XIV when he built Versailles (pronounced "ver-SIGH").

Overall, Versailles is an architectural and landscaping masterpiece. Restraint was not characteristic of the French royal family, and the building and grounds of the palace show what can happen when a whim is allowed to become a reality.

Once again, I had downloaded an audio tour onto my iPod to aid in navigating through an unimaginably complex main palace, grounds, and collection of more modest garden homes.

To begin with, even with the Paris Museum Pass, the entry line to the palace and grounds is long and slow. Visitors are subject to airline-like security measures.

Inside, there are fewer furnishings than can be found at Fontainebleau, primarily due to the fact that Versailles attempts to show its glory from pre-Revolutionary period, and many of those furnishings were pilfered when the rioting mobs ransacked the royal digs. (Fontainebleau, in contrast, highlights the Napoleonic era, and his demise didn't seem to result in such unrestrained thievery.)

However, the building's walls, ceilings, art, and grandeur are enough to overwhelm the senses on their own. And I cannot avoid mentioning the crowds, which on Saturday swept me along like a river-born twig. All I could do was slip briefly into an occasional eddy to take in the spectacle before rejoining the current.

Photos are forbidden inside the palace, but given Versailles' prior experience with mobs, the attendants are probably wise not to be sticklers about that rule. I snuck in a few snapshots to serve as mementos.

Once outside, the gardens looked lovely and well tended, although a little winter-weary. I stepped into a copse of trees to grab a bite to eat at a small snack bar there, and when I returned to the main expanse, a transformation had taken place: The fountains had begun to spew! The spraying jets immediately shifted the focus from the leafless trees to their own lively froth, and the wind carried mists into the crowds on one side, then another.

The gardens were also filled with Baroque chamber music pouring from an amazing sound system. (I don't mean to gush about technology in this playground for the pre-electric aristocracy, but I've seldom heard such undistorted sounds from speakers that are consistently subject to the elements.)

Further into the gardens sit smaller palaces: The Grand Trianon, the Petit Trianon, and Marie Antoinette's Hamlet (a little farming village where she got to play peasant). These buildings hold more furniture and are less imposing. Perhaps it's hubris on my part, but I can understand why the royal family might have wanted to escape to these more intimate surroundings out of sight of the grander palace. This all-too-human habit oddly helped Louis XVI become cut off from the humans he ruled, and possibly contributed to his eventual demise.

Trains run from Paris to Versailles several times an hour, and it only takes about 10 minutes to walk from the station to the Palace. The town itself looks charming, and perhaps is worth a later visit.

So back to Paris I went for one last Parisian dinner.

Blog to you later!