Versailles

Understanding the French Revolution is a lot easier after visiting Versailles.  Begun by Louis XIII as a hunting lodge, it was expanded by Louis XIV (The Sun King) because he found that he wasn't as safe from assassins in Paris as he hoped.  Nothing was too good for him.  It is widely reported that in the year of the heaviest work, half of France's GNP was devoted to the effort.  The grounds cover 2,014 acres, 230 of which are gardens.  This acreage qualifies it as the world's largest palace, at least in terms of what the gardener was responsible for.  The final pre-revolutionary residents of the grounds were Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette (who did not actually say "let them eat cake", you should know).  After their eviction in 1789, the property went vacant until it was converted into a museum in 1832.

The Chateau has 721,206 square feet of floor space.  One of the most impressive rooms in that space is the Hall of Mirrors, which was restored in 2007.  The French are justifiably proud of the entire space; this restoration was done with private funding.

 
With this kind of acreage inside and out to cover, one works up an appetite.  Fortunately, there are solutions to that problem.  Our choice was to take advantage of a surprise discovery.  Angelina's has a cafe in the chateau.  Angelina's has been on Anita's list of "treat" stops since we started planning this trip, for no reason other than the hot chocolate.  After some quiche and salad, we settled in to hot chocolate l'africain and macarons.  Macarons (not to be confused with macaroons, the coconut cookies you may be familiar with) are little sandwiches of meringue wrapping a delicate creme filling.

And the hot chocolate is hard to describe.  The closest I can get is to imagine melting a Hershey's bar and drinking that.

So, we may not have been able to live like the Louies, but we feel like for just a moment, we could eat like them.