We have two weeks to explore Paris so we decide to take our time and explore slowly (knowing we will miss some things). We still have our car until tuesday the 17th, and looking at the weather forecast we decide we shall drive to Versaille on saturday 14th August. This also gives us a chance to drive and discover the neighborhoods a bit.
We visit Versaille in the morning, unfortunately not arriving quite early enough to avoid long ques, almost an hour just to get tickets as we did not do this ahead of time online. We opt to visit the gardens first as the weather was nice (storm clouds looming) and the fountains were operating at this time. The shear size of the gardens are impressive and the to think they were for royalty and their guests is unfathomable. Sculptures of famous historical people, mythological animals and real ones, fountains depicting Greek Gods fetes are everywhere. We spend a lot of time exploring and walking the mazes in the gardens. We make our way to the two smaller palaces toward the back of the gardens. Marie Antionette was once a resident here and they do a good job with their information boards telling the history. The palace was primarily constructed out of a pink and yellow granite, not really to my liking, but impressive none-the-less. Of course the furnishings were very French, very ornate with colorful tapestries and gold. I must say it was very impressive. By 3:30 in the afternoon we are ready to tackle the que for the maIn Palace of Versaille, and lucky for us the line is much shorter than it was early this morning and we are inside in a short 10 minute wait. We get an audio guide for our visit and begin. We have not been in an overly tourist place in a long time and are overwhelmed by the number of people. We follow along, making our way through the beautiful Palace and apartments. We are thoroughly exhausted by the end of our visit and the vote was to return to our condo for a glass of wine and dinner.
We have rain for the next several days but take the opportunity to explore some of the markets on the outskirts of Paris and our own neighborhood of Vincennes. We return our car on tuesday and discover the Paris Metro, which has a station a short 10 minute walk from our place. We take ourselves in to Paris early wednesday to explore the Louvre! We arrive early buy a 6 day museum pass and begin exploring. We chose to find the Monna Lisa first, which of course is surrounded by people, but amazing! We continue on the 1st floor seeing much of it before (it is now mid afternoon) we decide we need fresh air and a break from the Louvre. The afternoon is lovely and we decide to walk the gardens toward the Arc de Triumph. Along the way we stop at the Musee de la Orangie which has Monet's Water Lillies and others impressionist paintings. We arrive at the Champs de Lessay, the grand boulevard, and walk along until we reach the Arc de Triumph. Gorgeous from the ground and the view from the top is fabulous.
We continue through the week and see Notre Dame; its Tower, Cathedral and Crypt, the Conciergy and St. Chapelle, the Musee of Maritime, Pantheon, Musee de Cluny, Chateau Vincennes, many of the Jardines (gardens) of the city and of course the Eiffel Tower. What can I say the Eiffel Tower is amazing! We take the stairs up, which is quite an easy task after we have spent the year walking, hiking and climbing stairs. We have chosen a most glorious day for this as the skies are true blue and we can see for miles. We arrive just at opening time and make our way up before the crowd is too large. Did you know the Eiffel Tower was constructed in 1 years time and was meant only to be temporary! They decided to keep it only after they began using it for antennas for radio. Could you imagine Paris without an Eiffel Tower. It would be like Seattle without the Space Needle, just not right. We also visited the old medieval part of Paris, Sacre Coure, many other churches and the Catacombes
We enjoy markets and Paris has many weekend "flea" markets and we discover a couple of them, no treasures but enjoyable. Tim, on the other hand does not join us for the markets but takes himself off across the city by train to a soccer field he spotted while we were atop the Eiffel Tower. Of course I was worried but he had a map and the desire, so off he went. We all had an enjoyable sunday. Jeff and I are off to Louvre once again but even after spending the better portion of the day we still do not come close to seeing half of it. Tim has taken off to play soccer once again saying he was "museumed out".
We cooked most of the time in Paris, but we also did eat out a couple of times and even got the chance to meet up with a young man we had met in Thailand. Philippe promised to take us out for Snails when we came to Paris and he was good to his word. We met him at one of his favorite restaurants for dinner; snails, duck pate, sausage made from pig intestine, steak and wine. Not to forget Tim and Philippe each had an enormous ice cream for dessert. Thank you Philippe for a lovely evening filled with good food and conversation, we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.
Our "Road to Nowhere" has come to an end, as I write this we are flying back to the USA and our many family and friends.
Cheers ~ Karen
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