Author: Put

Going back in time, precovid, presurgery, pre, pre, pre.

A friend of a friend said ”If you haven’t visited Versailles, you haven’t been to France”. I don’t really agree with that. To me, the Chateau is just too over the top, too much of everything including too many visitors. But, after seeing all the gilt, finery, portraits, furniture, etc. you can start to understand how the French Revolution came to be and why so much of the royalty and nobles were destroyed. Too much hunger, disease and poverty will destroy, a lesson we never seem to learn. We are once again watching highly autocratic and centralized governments seize more and more power in Russia, China, the Mideast, south and central America and indeed in the US. Gilded toilets anyone?

So, maybe to understand France you do need to visit Versailles.

I visited Versailles once before, when I was 12 or 13. I don’t remember too much about the visit, but I do remember my Dad grumbling about the long trip to the Chateau from Paris. This time we took the metro and RER train, it as still a long, uncomfortable trip. ?

We decided to wander around the Marais in Paris on our first day. Not enough energy to do much else.

The GoPro’s are fair to good, but if you want to zoom in on a subject while editing, the lack of resolution is a real problem. In this video, I first reframed the shot of the grass field and then tried to zoom in on the seaplane. Less than optimal results. Take a look.