The answer to yesterday's question is zero, because you forgot them all on your nightstand while packing. Today we went to Versailles as early as we could (while still partaking of the free breakfast - the poor-rich phenomenon at work) which involved driving through Paris traffic at it's best. It was much like high-speed beltway traffic around any major city in the north-east, except with the bonus of motorcycles passing you through slots less than a foot wider than themselves. So pretty fun, actually, made me miss driving / wish I had a bike. I saw one girl ride up to her office on the back of a motorcycle and kiss her boyfriend goodbye ... except the helmets were in the way, so it was sort of a football-helmet smash / kiss combo deal. Very cute.Versailles was surprisingly easy to get into, smaller than expected, and more opulent than imagined. The line was long, but fast moving, and we were in to see the next line - for audioguides - in minutes. Protip: if you take earbuds to a museum you won't have to hold the audioguide up to your ear the whole time. If you take a splitter you and your partner can hear the same facts at the same times (convenient) and will have to walk like Siamese twins (inconvenient).
The two main things I leaned at Versailles were 1) How good marble looks, especially for fireplaces, and 2) It's so good to be king that it's worth it even if every meal turns into a watching-you-eat event for courtiers. I learned lots of other things about history and art and how easy it is to see over a sea of Japanese tourists, but I don't want to bore you. The hall of mirrors is worth pointing out as gem within the jewelry that is the palace. A row of windows echoed by a row of mirrors, passing cut-glass lamps and chandeliers as they go. Money can definately buy happiness, at least for an hour or two of wow-look-at-this.
After the main tour we (more quickly) did the apartments of the royal princesses, complete with cute libraries and hidden doors. This makes a great time to explain what I meant about my dad touring. He will jog across the courtyard to double check that there's no side-line that's any shorter, but then fall behind the rest of us even though we are walking slowly and listening to every audio entry.... but then he will speed-walk through the girly apartments before coming to a dead-stop to consult the maps and plan for 10 minutes.
The gardens were next, and they played music so that they could charge an additional entry fee. On the flip side, that meant they had one or two of the fountains dancing. We set off into the gardens amidst sprinkles of rain that mercifully disappeared before halting to examine the map. Again. We decided we'd head off to a cafe in the back corner for lunch, and I slipped around a bush to take a meandering route that would intersect them... except they doubled back and didn't walk the route they set off on. Needless to say, there was no intersecting. My brief look at the map gave me an inkling of where they were headed though, so I set off towards it, passing through some sweet faux-ruins. Seriously, my future wife should never let me own a house or we are going to have all sorts of stupid/awesome things going on. Anyways, my glance at the map was brief enough I confused the main lawn with the main canal that extends beyond it (and used to be part of the gardens), so I set off well beyond my goal, turning my shortcut into a two-mile long-cut. Getting back was a walk in the park.Once I figured everything out I headed to where the cafe actually was, pausing to watch a fountain dance in a pond. They did spinny things, shooty things, and sweet mid-air collisions that looked like sorcery. As I watched, my family showed up, having finished their meal. We watched the fountains and headed off for the rest of the park.
Mom and I pealed off to visit the Trianons, smaller palaces built for the mistress of the king so she could get away from the hustle and bustle of Versailles. The larger of the two we visited was filled with a clothing exhibition, meaning I was the only guys and that we could skim the signs. It did have a cool room to show off all the malachite given to Napolean by Tsar Alexander, and a beautiful open-air marble hallway connecting the two halves. This left us enough time to check out the smaller palace, called the Petite Trianon. This was small enough we toured the entire building, which let us see kitchens and bathrooms, things hidden in the larger buildings. King Louis the 15th ordered a dining room in which the table lifted, fully set, from the kitchen, but he died before it was completed. We could still see the outline on the floor where it would have worked, though.Our time expired, we headed back to meet the boys on the "train" - which had no rails and a diesel engine, but close enough, right? They had walked around some and gotten ice-cream. We took a family picture on the way out (our second of the day) and headed back to Paris.
Dad really wanted to drive the Arc de Triumph, so we let him. It was scary at times, since incoming traffic has the right of way. But he didn't stall it anywhere scary and didn't hit any of the scooters flying in off the side streets and swerving through, so no worries. We'd finished Versailles faster than expected though, so we had time to do one more thing in Paris. Sacré-Cœur it was!
Sacré-Cœur is one of the newer churches in Paris, built around the turn of the last century (1900ish) as an optimistic gesture during a recession. The church is pretty, but standard, inside, but it's built on a hill so you can see all of Paris from the front steps. OR you can go up inside and see more (than all!) from the dome! So Ethan, dad, and I did just that. I think it was probably the most fun out of all the church climbs. The spiral staircases are tighter and take some unexpected turns, plus you get spit out onto the roof where you can look at the side-spires and how one would get up them (hop a fence and climb through a few inches of birdpoo. I didn't, because my ex thinks I'll get myself arrested in France and I;m trying to prove her wrong). Then we went up a yet-tighter spiral (300 steps in all) and emerged into a ring around the dome. It was beautiful. The view from the arc was clearer and closer, but here you looked past columns and over domes from a height above all but the tip of Eiffel's tower.
As I'm sure you can tell, I really liked it. I should probably find a job cleaning cathedral gutters or something. We headed down and met with the others who'd been wandering the art markets. There was some cool art, silhouettes free-handed by men with tiny scissors, 3d art on faux 3d backgrounds to fool your eyes, and portraits of every type. We bought naught save a few postcards, got in our car, and headed towards our hotel.
And then away from, and towards again, and then away from but not moving, and then towards but in a bus-only lane. And then no-way because we stalled, and then through the ghetto. It was rush-hour in Paris, and it was a wreck (or was the wreck ahead of us?). Our only saving grace was a GPS and the fact that most people were trying to escape the city, not cross it. Really though, it was a better commercial for scooters than anything else ever could be, seeing them skirt past traffic like rats fleeing a flood. Our unintentional tour included about 50 churches, the Egyptian obelisk where they beheaded everyone, and the Parthenon*, which is now a church. *Not that Parthenon, the other Parthenon.
Eventually we got to the hotel (boring), rested, and went out to get dinner. Italian food served by a pixie-ish waiter at a table far away from the smokers out front. Good food and plenty of it. After dinner we went for a walk to see the American Church (closed, but we "saw" it) and the Trocadero - which is not just a bar in Philly but also a fountainy place where the longboarders hang out. One boarder jumped 3 1/2 feet off his board over a fence and then landed back on his board which had rolled beneath it. We waited 15 minutes but didn't get a repeat, so we walked home crossing under the Eiffel tower, buying another whirly-glowy-bird (for Ethan), and getting a free glowing tower! Well, free to us. All the tower-hawkers came sprinting across and one dropped a tower and his bag of stuff, police at full (but slower - they're never gonna catch a 20y/o african) tilt behind him. After he dropped his stuff he disappeared into the woods, leaving the police a bag of stuff and us a tower! Go team!Ethan played with his shooty thing and we watched the lights and waved off hawkers. There is a special 1am lightshow, so I must set off into the night. Au Revoir.
Photos of Trianon and Sacre Cour by me, all the rest by Ethan with no direction.
