sydney voit le monde: fontainebleau and vaux-le-vicomte

three weekends ago, we took a group trip to fontainebleau and vaux-le-vicomte.

i back-dated this post so everything would be in chronological order. just in case you were confused.

(good thing i'm up to date on my blog. jokes.)

anyways...our first stop was fontainebleau.

fontainebleau is a lovely little château || castle just outside of paris. it has housed royalty of france for centuries, and is now a museum of sorts. this "little" château boasts over 1500 rooms and over 130 acres of parkland and gardens. (when i said little, it was sarcasm. the place was massive.)

fontainebleau has been around since the medieval times, but it wasn't until the renaissance that it became a true palace. rulers such as charles v, henry ii, catherine de medici (she had six kids here), charles iv, and henry iv.

fun fact : in all of his portraits, henry iv is smiling! (i told you it was fun.)

in the 17th century, the bourbon family took over and lived there.

it eventually became the home of napoleon.

it was amazing. i can't even tell you. for some reason, i have always had this image in my head of castles being cold and slightly less than inviting, although beautiful. however, the châteaux of france have definitely changed my mind. these places, while over-the-top extravagant, don't feel so lonely. they are ridiculous, gorgeous, frou-frou, and a little bit homey. how that works, i'm not quite sure. i would never have told you that i would have wanted to live in fontainebleau before visiting it...but now i'm sold. if that place ever goes on the market...i'm gonna be first in line to purchase it.

our next stop was a château called vaux-le-vicomte.

in 1641, nicolas fouquet purchased an old château (vaux-le-vicomte) to fix up. he hired louis le vau as his architect and andré le nôtre as his gardener.

(nicolas fouquet was the financial secretary of france under louis vix. just to clear some things up for ya.)

to make a loooooong and very political story short, when louis xiv saw vaux-le-vicomte, and how much money was spent on it, and how fouquet was living in a nicer place than the king was...let's just say fouquet was out of a job and out of a home.

when louis xiv later built the palace of versailles, he modeled it after vaux-le-vicomte. having been to both places, i can definitely see the similarities in style between the two châteaus. especially in the gardens.

while vaux-le-vicomte was pretty neat, it was the gardens that stole my heart. i can't even tell you how much i loved them. all i wanted to do was wear a long and flowy dress and walk around the gardens for hours on end. and then spend some time reading under a tree. and then walk around some more in my flowy dress. i didn't even care that it was raining while we were there. it was gorgeous.

enjoy the photos of my adventures!