J'adore Paris
Trip Start
Jan 25, 2010
1
24
48
Trip End
Apr 24, 2010
Versailles, Île-de-France, France
Saturday, March 6, 2010
We did start our day off by speaking to Manuelle, the mean lady from the front desk. After that did not go over well at all, we decided to move on and start our day. We had planned to go to Versailles for the morning and then that afternoon do a few more things around Paris. We got on the train to go to Versailles and were headed to see the palace. Heather was extremely excited because she has a slight obsession with Marie Antoinette. She even bought an Aristocat stuffed animal cat in Venice from the Disney Store and named in Marie (after Marie Antoinette). This was her birthday weekend and the only thing she had been really looking forward to. We got to the Versailles train station, and stopped at Starbucks for a quick breakfast since the OOPS breakfast had failed us
Versaiiles
. We walked down the road and as we turned the corner, the first thing you saw from miles away was the huge palace. We got out tickets and went to the front to take a few touristy pictures in front of the golden gates. As soon as we started taking pictures, a huge crowd of school kids walked by and got in line. Lauren had dropped her water bottle but was busy taking a picture so I went to get it for her. The boys in the group had decided to start kicking the water bottle down the hill, not knowing that I was chasing after it. I finally caught up to them and reached for the water bottle that they were standing on and kicking around. They all stared at me and laughed as I picked it up. They were all in line by then so we ran to get in line behind before anyone else could get there first. The ticket we bought gave us access to all of the open apartments in Versailles and to Marie Antoinette's home. We started off at the chapel, which had a huge vault painted ceiling and a gold gilt altar. It was beautiful but nothing compared to what we were about to see. The next few rooms were art collections of the palace and then a room about the history of Versailles with pictures and drawings from over the years. All the wallpaper in every room was a different color flocked damask and had a trim that coordinated and I LOVED it. That may have been my favorite part of those rooms
Gates of Versailles
. Then we got to the good stuff.The first few rooms were used as entertaining rooms. The first room had a HUGE painting hanging that literally took up an entire wall. Each room was beautiful and so extravagant it was unreal. During our visit, Heather gave us a few random facts that she had learned through watching movies and reading books because of her obsession with Marie Antoinette. We finally got to the Hall of Mirrors, which was incredible. All I could think when I was walking through it was how much it would suck to clean all of the chandeliers and mirrors. Every chandelier and every ceiling in every room was perfect!!! I am obsessed with chandeliers and I wanted to take all of the ones in Versailles home with me. We were also amazed at how well the carpets in the rooms had lasted after so long, unless they had replaced them but our audio guide did not tell us.
When we got to Marie Antoinette's bedroom is when Heather started freaking out. Not only was it Marie Antoinette’s bedroom, but it was also decorated with peacock feathers, her favorite animal/colors. We finished our tour in the palace and then went to get on the shuttle to go to Marie Antoinette’s home outside of the palace. We were not as impressed by her home because it was so small and really didn’t have much to see. I am thinking this is because we are in the off-season for tourists and they were doing construction, as usual, so we didn’t get to see everything. We finished with Versailles and made it back on the train. We didn’t get back to Paris until 4:00 so we went back to the hostel and got ready for that night.
We went to the Moulin Rouge and Montmartre, where they have lots of art shops
running after my ticket
. We fell in love as soon as we started walking around. There were tons of cute florist, chocolate and clothing stores. Heather had been on a mission to find a cupcake and we found the cutest cupcake store ever. They had every flavor cupcake, cheesecake and fruit tarts ever invented. They even had blue cupcakes with smurf gummies on top! We also found a cute art store with hand painted scenes of Paris. I picked two out and couldn’t decide so I was going to buy both. The woman looked at me and said "this one costs 70 Euro" to the BEST one I had picked out – so I decided to just buy the other one that was only 20 Euro, to save some money after Fridays fiasco. We wanted to go to the Eiffel Tower to climb it at night and the Arc de Triomphe/Champs-Élysées was on the way so we stopped there first to walk around. We stopped at a cute restaurant and had a nice dinner before we headed to the Eiffel Tower. We got off the metro and were attacked by people selling Eiffel tower trinkets. The tower was twinkling which made it a million times better. We went up to the top, and had the best view ever of Paris. Heather had brought Marie to take a picture with her on top of the Eiffel Tower, because she is from Paris. She was so excited about her picture that she squeezed in between all the people looking out, right into another guys picture, holding up Marie and pointing out to Paris. It was freezing at the top, because it was so windy and cold so we went back down to the gift shops where I invested in a mini Eiffel Tower.
We had a great night and were not excited to go back to our hostel. We were however excited for the next day, which we already had planned out. (We also managed to get extra sheets and real pillowcases in our new room at OOPS.)
