Palace Gardens Too

 

These shots of the colonnade and lantern are from the rear face of the Schloss Schonbrunn, the side of the palace that faces onto the extensive grounds.

If you have seen my posts before you will know that I am a fan of black and white images and today I have picked similar shots to compare the colour images with the black and white. I like all four pictures but I am having difficulty choosing a favourite or to say whether colour beats monochrome. I look at the first image and think colour has it today and then I look at the second image and think ah, but does it really, perhaps monochrome steals it, and then I move onto image three and... oh I am so confused.

This could be a movie set...

This is the Chateau de Pierrefonds. I visited here for the first time way back in 19## when I was just 9 years old  on a visit with my penfriends' family. I was amazed with the magnificent building with its fairytale turrets and towers, cobbled courtyard and the wonderful staircase guarded by the statue of a knight on horseback.

It had such an impact on me as a child that when I took my own family on holiday top France I was keen to show them this magical place. 

I visited again just recently, stopping off for a brief visit to break the journey from Versailles to Calais on my way home. It gripped me just as much this time round as it did the first. I had to wait ages to get these last two shots without anyone in the shot, at one point there was a woman stood in the middle looking back at me, aware that I was waiting to take a picture and she just wouldn't move. In the end I started snapping away with her in the shot, she quickly moved...

I said it is a magical place and I said in the title to this post that this could be a movie set and in fact it was used as a set for the TV show Merlin. The producers of that show clearly were drawn to the spell of the chateau. I will share some more images in due course but for today, enjoy!