Versailles

Today didn't start out so great. This morning, I woke up early to take a shower. Since there's only one for the whole hotel, we are trying to shower every other day. I went to grab the shampoo, and I couldn't find it. Daniel used it last, and apparently he left it in the shower. He went upstairs, and of course it wasn't there anymore. So we just made it work and showered without shampoo. The pharmacie (I'm learning to spell in French) doesn't open until after 8am, so we couldn't buy any. That whole fiasco put us about a half hour behind schedule. We were concerned about the crowds so we wanted to get to Versailles as close to 9am as possible.

By the time we got ready and everything it was already about 9am. We knew we had to take the RER C line to get to Versailles. Right now they are doing work on a bunch of stations that are closed. This complicated things a bit. Once we got to the RER station, we had to figure out what train to transfer to that would take us to Versailles. After looking at a bunch of different maps and screens, we discovered a sign that said, in English, "How to get to Chateau Versailles" Ha! The French are smart after all :-) So we followed the directions. We came upon a ton of other English speakers, so we knew we had to be in the right place. When we got off the train, there were immediately people trying to sell us tickets and tours and everything else. We stopped at the tourism office to buy our tickets there since we knew the lines would be long at the Chateau. The tickets were 2 euros more expensive, but we discovered when we got to the Chateau that it was worth it. The line was so long! Then, another disappointment: we still had to wait in a loooong line to actually get into the Chateau. But the line went very fast and before we knew it, we were inside. Our tickets came with an audioguide headset too.

We went through all of the rooms in the Chateau first: the King's staterooms, the Queen's staterooms, the Dauphin's staterooms (the Dauphin is the next in line to the throne, kind of like the Prince), the Madames' rooms (madames were the Dauphin's sisters) and of course the Hall of Mirrors. To be completely honest, at the end I was left wondering " that was it?" Daniel told me he felt the same way. The audioguide was very unimpressive. It spent most of the time telling us this painting is of this second cousin twice removed of the third in line to the throne and the chest of drawers was made by the official wood carver to the Royal Family. And when they described where the pieces came from, most of them didn't really belong there. A ton of the stuff was reproductions based on descriptions or drawings, and a ton of it came from other palaces. Almost none of the rooms look now like they actually looked in the 18th century. It was quite disappointing. They weren't nearly as extravagant as the Palacio Real in Madrid or even the Louvre's exhibits of furnishings. In fact, the rooms were mostly empty. I'm making it sound worse than it was really. We still did enjoy it. The fabrics in particular were beautiful. And Daniel remarked on how they liked everything to match. The wallpaper matched the bedspread matched the chairs matched the carpet. It was really funny. Of course the Hall of Mirrors was beautiful. I don't mean to be cliché, but I think it was my favorite. I thought it was cool that a little piece of American history took place in that room.

The Hall of Mirrors

Daniel thought it was funny that I blended in with the room so well.

After we toured the Chateau, we started out to the gardens. The first thing we came across, of course, was the "Grand Perspective". We stood at the top of a big staircase and looked out over the whole grounds of Versailles. It was beautiful. Today was cloudy and windy and cold, which made it actually quite pleasant to be outside.

At Grand Trianon

The back of Chateau Versailles

The ticket that we bought included a visit to two other small palaces on the grounds called Grand Trianon and Petit Trianon as well as Marie Antoinette's private grounds. These were about a 30 minute walk through the gardens. We stopped to get a mediocre, overpriced lunch at a small stand in the gardens.

Grand Trianon and Petit Trianon were nice, but equally unimpressive. I think they are in the process of renovating them. The gardens, however, were full of beautiful flowers and small fountains. I really tried to imagine what it would have looked like to Marie Antoinette, but it was so hard to picture it with all the tourists and signs and everything. We walked over to Marie Antoinette's private grounds. This was a little village that she had constructed where she could go to get away from court and not have to practice all the strict etiquette rules. There was a full farm with goats, sheep, donkeys, rabbits, ducks, and chickens. We really enjoyed that. We walked back towards the main palace to the Grand Canal. They had a bike rental that wasn't too expensive, so we went for it. We thought that it would be a better way to see the grounds. We could see more in less time. It was so much fun! It's been a long time since I've ridden a bike. We rode all the way around the Great Canal in about 45 minutes.

Along the way we stopped to take pictures and talked to a family from Chicago. We returned the bikes at about 5:00pm and the gardens closed at 5:30. We made our way back up to the palace. They had little tiny stands along the way where they were freshly squeezing orange juice from oranges grown right there in the gardens. We each got a little cup. The guy stood right there and cut open the orange and squeezed it into the cup. It was delicious!

We sat on the steps looking out over the whole gardens for the last 15 minutes until it closed. We ended up sitting right next to a couple from Michigan. They asked us to take their picture, and we started talking. They asked us if we were on our honeymoon or what, and we said no we just got engaged. They congratulated us and told us that they got married on Friday. So we congratulated them! There are so many Americans here, it's almost ridiculous. So we took the train back to Paris and got back to the city about 6:30pm. I wanted to see the Pantheon, so we took the metro there. It was closed, but we got to take pictures of the outside. Then we found a little café with a very friendly waiter and ordered some dinner. I love that in France, I can order cheese and bread for dinner. It's delicious! Daniel got an omelet. Then we had to save room for dessert. I had chocolate mousse that was almost like eating chocolate frosting with a spoon! Daniel had chocolate cake with vanilla ice cream. I think the food is one of my favorite parts of Paris.

We got on the metro to come back to our hotel. We had to transfer trains of course. The first one had an opening to get onto the platform without buying a ticket. So we went right through and didn't buy a ticket. We got off to transfer at one of Paris' huge stations, Gare du Nord. We walked all the way across the huge station to our platform, only to discover you have to put your ticket in to get through. So we walked through the station and tried to find a ticket machine. We couldn't find one! We wandered the station for 30 minutes looking for a ticket office or automated machine and didn't find one. Finally, we decided we had better exit and find a machine outside the station. Then we discovered you have to put your ticket in the machine to exit! So we were stuck inside the station without a ticket and no machine inside the station. A guy saw that we were trying to get through and he held out his automated card for us to use to get through. He was so kind to let us through with his card. We offered him a 2 euro coin, but he declined. I don't think he spoke very good English. Anyways, we have come across so many nice Parisians. On the way back to our hotel, we found that the pharmacies were closed (they are not open 24 hours like ours are) so we wandered the streets until we found a general store where we could buy shampoo. Thank goodness we have some now! Maybe Parisian shampoo is better than American. We'll see!