Versailles -- Gallery of the Battles with the Giant Fatasy Octupi

Yes, silly me, I thought we were done with Ms. Vasconcelos and the interesting portion of our tour as we headed to a very long, very large gallery devoted to the paintings of important battles.  Which to the French is all of them.  Little did I realize what would completely capture my attention.

 First we passed a simple stairway.  Like the Louvre, a lot of the interesting stuff at Versailles is the architecture itself, not the decoration.

The a more-or-less nondescript hallway.  Nondescript for Versailles, anyway.

 

And then we enter the Gallerie de Batailles, where we are apparently at war with fantasy stuffed octupi.

That was one, and now...there are two.  The second is an even more gigantic gold monster.

Yup, way more gigantic.

And just as we escape from the gold guy, than we realize there is a third.  Perhaps not bigger, but longer.

So by now you know we are not done.  Of course not.  How do you escape from giant stuffed fantasy octupi?

By your pink plumed helicopter, of course!

But only after the best hot chocolate in the world!

And by now the rain has settled in, but the light is lovely as we make our way back to the train, and back to Paris.