Chantilly....The home of creme, castles, and chevals

Yesterday Coach Mas took Matt and myself to Chantilly to see the chateau there. It was a pretty quick ride. Funny to think that it took the Kings and Queens of the time over 8 hours to arrive from Paris to Chantilly. Coach made the comment that for us 8 hours now means New York, not Paris. The world is definitely getting smaller, which makes you think what it will be like in the next 100 years.

Anyways as we arrived to the Chateau, you could see the overwhelming size of land that belonged to the estate. The Chateau was situated on the left of the cobblestone street, while the Great stables and horse track where on the right. Chantilly seems to be the place for the horse. As I was told... apparently the King who lived in the chateau was so convinced that he would be reincarnated as a horse, that he built an enormous stable just for the horses. It was incredible to see a building of such grandiuer housing just horses. But I'll get back to that later. It was a warm day with no clouds to block the sun from beeming down so we were comfortable in shorts.

First we went into the chateau and looked around through the open rooms. It seemed to me that the inhabitants of this specific place were well intrigued with hunting. There were lions and platypus and stag and horns lining the walls.... that's right a platypus was on the wall. Not to mention the massive amounts of old school weapons. Like staffs, swords, and even a completely silver knife decorated in ornate fassion.

A picture of the all silver knife.

One of the Lions hanging from the wall.

The Orleans family owned the property and then left it over to the Institute of France. Apparently his rule was that you could not move the collection of his library and you could not change the arrangement of his paintings. The painting gallery had frame to frame pictures and was quite a unique layout. The library was imense for a private collection. It also had some cool chairs in the room with built in reading stands to lay the books across your laps. Because some people are just too good to hold their own books!

One of the rooms held this really weird piece of furniture. It looks pretty normal from the bottom up, but once you reach the top you'd think you just found Superman's home planet. The top of the dresser or desk or gun cabinent had huge rocks standing on it. I didn't quite understand this one, maybe you can figure it out.

We went into the chapel built for the king. Probably capable of holding 20 people at a maximum. I started singing old songs from choir class, which I still remember. (sidenote I wonder if I just put every piece of information into a song....would I be able to recollect it on demand? Because some how I can still remember the words from most songs I know) After seeing the chateau on our own, we went on the guided tour into the parts of the castle that requires a chaperone.

We saw a 2 million dollar table that was valued at 4 million. The chandeliers that used to run on candlelight only. The guide would explain that they had to constantly clean the candles and could only use half of a candle before they would change them. This was the second highest price spent on utilities, the first being fresh flowers that were exchanged twice a day. As you woke up the flowers were yellow and as you went to bed they were blue. All of this of course was being translated by coach to us in the back of the room.

Afterwards we walked to a small shop which served amazing desserts. Coach Mas is obsessed with desserts. He was literally a big kid in a candy store and couldn't wait for the creme chantilly. It's actually the place where they invented the creme. Needless to say it's amazing. It is whipped cream with a sweetflavors, sometimes having vanilla in it. It was really good on my chocolate pear pie. I tried to take a picture, but of course we couldn't help ourselves and already began to devour the desserts before I remembered to pull out my camera.

Afterwards we saw a pretty neat animal gladiator competition. Against the birds of the air and the fish of the sea. Ok so a duck and some fish were fighting over bread, but I did get it on camera. Check out below.

Afterwards we walked over to the Great Stables and walked around the horse track. The stables were huge. I couldn't believe that they only housed horses. Ridiculous. But when you think about people in power wasting money on things, it's not too bad! Really though it really is a place to show off the horse. The ceilings and walls were all solid stone and had to be close to 3 stories high. Just for 30 or so horses in the main hall.

All in all it was a good day. I learned later that they have a huge firework competition out on the lawn for all the people to see. It's sometime in June...so might have to check that out. Not a bad place to celebrate the 4th of July if it was in America. Also I learned that Ronaldo got married in the Chateau, and that you can rent out the Chateau for formal occasions. Seems me and Ronaldo have been going to the same places. That's another story for another day.

Check out the pictures HERE