Versailles - Hamlet

Last time I explained a bit about Marie-Antoinette's kind of crazy fantasy that she could remove herself from court life and live in the "country" as a make-believe shepherdess.  To make this role more authentic she had this tiny "hamlet" made just for her where she could escape to her imagined "country life."  It is a longish but pleasant walk from the Petit Trianon, where she spent most of her time.  This was probably the craziest thing she did in her tenure as queen.

Although it was a representation of a fantasy, this actually was a functioning farm after she had it made.  It had farm animals and working buildings to process all the farm stuff - the queen would even milk cows and sheep here, after they had been meticulously cleaned by her staff, of course.  There was a laiterie (a place to process dairy products), a mill, a couple of houses, a farmhouse where most of the animals were kept, things like that.

I have to say this place is really pretty and picturesque, just as it's supposed to be.  It was more or less abandoned after the French Revolution and only restored two hundred years later, but they did a very good job.

This is the "lighthouse," originally intended as a fishery but mostly it just held the equipment for when the queen felt like taking a little boat trip around the lake.

This is the house where the queen stayed when she was around.  The building attached on the left was the kitchen area.

One of the buildings burned down at some point, it might have been the mill.

There are still sheep, goats, chickens, roosters, ducks, and other types of fowl there.  Here is a peacock:

And thus concludes the tour of Versailles!  It really is worth a visit if you ever come to Paris, although it needs a full day to do everything there.