Hotel de France Versailles

... walking around the fountain and it ended up taking almost 3 hours. Needless to say the Versailles Palace was closed when we were done, but our time was not wasted because the gardens in and of themselves are quite impressive. I was a little disappointed that many of the fountains were not on ( I suppose due to the time of year) and that obviously the flower gardens were empty. We were aware when we started this trip that many things would not be at their top notch quality due to the time ...

... statues, etc, etc. We choose a unique batch that only gave us what we wanted. We found the statue of love:












Then we kept strolling because we heard this story that Marie Antoinette got bored with even the two Trianons so now she needed a retreat of her own. She hires a well known architect and painter and tells them to design a life size village like she remembers ...

... the gardens. Mom and I walked in with our tickets as we were chatting away. After a minute or two I noticed dad wasn't with us. We turned around and saw he was being turned away by the ticket collector.

We didn't want to go back to the other side to see what the problem was in case we ended up having the same problem. It turns out we would have. Dad stood in line for a ticket, then approached the ticket collector again and came to us. It turns out ...

... the royals actually lived and played and ate and all that. The drawing rooms were filled with the family's history from paintings to busts and just oozed opulence. Finally the moment had come... the Hall of Mirrors. Lucky for me it was completely open, no refurbishing going on and surprisingly not packed wall to wall with tourists (probably due to the close proximity of closing time). The Hall was incredible. I don't know if it was the time of day with the amber ...

... cities in my travels, I opted to spend my last afternoon at Versailles (approx 30 minutes SW of Paris) before retiring to my hotel near Charles de Gaulle Airport.

Shortly after arriving at the complex of buildings, chapels and gardens of Chateau Versailles, I sadly learned that it was closed on Mondays (which it happened to be). Determined to still see some of this landmark location, I walked to the front gates and westward along its impressive fences, thinking ...

... arrived at Notre Dame. It's an imposing structure, and kind of hard to take in all at once from the outside. I'll have to go back. There were people feeding those crazy Parisian pigeons, one old lady was almost completely covered with birds. These birds are like pets ... they would perch on anyone with a crust of bread. It kind of reminded me a little too much of the Hitchcock film though, so I didn't get too close, but it was cute. Also I think it is ...

... tour I have evern been on through the Vatican/Cistene Chapet & the Basilica - the guide had been through the Cistine Chapel something insane like 1250 times and was entertaining, a comedien (loved hassling us Aussies) and so incredibly knowledgable. We learnt so much and it was simply breathtaking. Today, after snacking on a brekkie of coffee and croissants, we went to the Louvre which was great but I must admit one does start to suffer ...

... How often in your life does that happen? We laid out in the park for awhile underneath the Eiffel Tower and then did some walking. We ended the day at the Invalides, which has a military museum and Napoleon's tomb. Then we laid in a park again - until Brittany realized she was laying in dog poo. So we had to run back to the hotel so she could change :) We came back on a late train Saturday night. All in all a perfect, sunny weekend in Paris.

... show all of this from a very unique perspective that is new to me: Mari's perspective of Paris and our life here. She puts much more effort into her pictures. I really admire her captions. You should see how she does it. Maybe I can make a photo story about that. Who is Nik? Nik is the nickname of my camera. I usually don't give names to things. However, the heading "Taking Nik ...

... Tower tomorrow. I went to bed early *NOTE*-People in Paris do not like giving directions. Of at least 12 people I asked, only one lady smiled. Thursday, March 9th,2006 : I woke up at 5am and spoke with the front desk guy. He hit on me! I was sitting on the staircase with him just talking when he decided to put his arm around me and he kissed my head!!!I got up and told him I was leaving, to which I did. I first went to the Sacre Coure and I stood outside feeding the pigeons ...