Fontainebleau

Chateau de Fontainebleau

My husband kept pronouncing this "fountainbleu" like a fountain of bleu cheese. I had to correct him...

It's "Fontaineblow" ... like that line in Shanghai Knights.

We were going to go for the day... visit the palace AND the gardens AND the forest (which is a big deal on its own). But.... we left the house at about 1:30 in the afternoon, and it was a 90-minute drive... and we were all pretty spent before we even started.

Our hostess was awesome. She and her two kids accompanied us. The kids all had a pretty great time. The adults all felt pretty wiped from all the driving and agreed that it wasn't very much bang for the driving buck.

Fontainbleau is a very big historical deal in France. It is more important than Versailles... even though The Big V is a lot fancier. If you click on the link under the above picture, it will lead you to info about why... in case you want to know.

I took Big G, Baby X and our hostess' oldest son on the quickie tour. That is the tour for kids. You don't really stop and learn about much of anything, you just check out all the grandiosity and splendor and how big or small the beds are, how much gold there is on stuff, whether or not there are chandeliers or lots of naked lady statues... that sort of tour. The tour takes most people a good solid hour or more. We did it in 32 minutes.

Here are some highlights...

Battle Royale in the courtyard!

 Jumping down off of things we shouldn't have been climbing on!

Being extremely cute on statues we shouldn't sit on while daddy watches us in the garden and mommy races through the palace with older kids!

 Miss C getting her training run in...

 the girl is a running machine, I tell you!

Those were the guys outside.

We were the guys inside.

Baby X was really into the audioguided tour gizmo... I think she learned a lot.

 Napoleon's bed... she is right next to it. It is super short... like he was. I was surprised, but maybe he wanted a cozy little bed to snuggle into at night?

We saw several other rooms, but we were going so fast that I forgot to take pictures.

It was a quick tour.

I am not sure exactly how this happened...

it was the end of the day.

 The kids enjoyed some cookies...

 Q-Man expressed his 'done-ness' by curling up into a ball.

 And my big girl has some issues with her socks... there were no visible injuries that would appear to require makeshift bandaging, so it must have been a fashion statement.

 Miss C passed on the cookies (much to her dismay) but did find solace in a date.

Of course, no palace of great national importance and significance would be complete without

a pissing dog fountain.

Am I right?

Artemis with her peeing hound dogs... I remember that myth.

And check this out!

Traffic looks the same in France!

No special style or panache...

just lots of cars,

cranky people,

dirty air...