Sunday in Paris -
Sunday was Versailles day. We took the train from Paris to Versailles, which is about an hour away. When we were walking up to the palace, I was just in awe at the size of it. It's ridiculous. Oh, Louis XIV, you were so unnecessarily extravagant. We got there at around 11am, which was good, because the lines to get in weren't that bad, compared to what we saw an hour later or so. The tricky thing about Versailles is that they divide up the estate, so that you have to pay to see different parts of it. Rick Steves (amazingly helpful travel guru) recommended going to the State Apartments if you're going to one part, so we did. It was just a dozen or so lavish rooms with narrow paths to walk through that were stuffed with tons of people. I was not impressed.
Then, we went out into the gardens, and I was completely blown away. The gardens there stretch out for something like 8 miles, separated by hedges and separated into smaller sub-gardens with fountains, flowers, grass, paths, beauty. They only turn on the fountains for a couple hours on Sundays and some Saturdays during the summer or something like that, so we were fortunate enough to catch the fountains in action since it was a Sunday afternoon. It was so worth it. It was like the gardens were asleep, and suddenly woke up. There's also a big canal that's over a mile long that was based on the canals in Venice, and people were boating and picnicing and riding bikes. It was definitely a nice getaway from the city.
We came back to Paris and climbed the stairs to the top of the Arc de Triomphe, which was worth it, because it was pretty cool to have a 360' view of the city. When we got back down, there was some ceremony going on, so we couldn't get out, but it was kinda neat to see. Military guys and all. My friends wanted to go to dinner at Planet Hollywood, because the Hard Rock Cafe apparently wasn't enough. It was awful. My food wasn't cooked, so I sent it back, then it was all burnt to nothingness, so I got another free (awful) meal. Then, we walked over to the Eiffel Tower, and decided to save money by just going to the first level, and we'd still get a view of the city at night. It was gorgeous, but nothing too spectacular. What was spectacular, though, was how at every hour for about 10 minutes, the Eiffel Tower sparkles, like fairy dust. We hung out in front of the tower for a couple hours, which was fun. Some people bought a bottle of wine, there was a drummer, and just random people hanging out by the tower. Oh, and there was this really funny Portugese guy there filming this ghetto music video for a cover of "I want you to want me" but in Portugese. He was in a suit, just dancing around, it was funny.
Monday morning, we got up at 5am to catch our 6:30am train back to London. Made it back just in time for my 9:30am class. It was a whirlwind trip, but I had a good time, and I got to see and actually go into a lot of the places that I didn't get to see last time, so that was nice. Next time I go to France, though, I really want to go out in the countryside somewhere. Maybe Monet's garden at Giverny...
PS - Pictures coming soon!