Did not sleep, i was waiting for mom to call so i got to bed only at 5am. this is much to my dismay because i did not expect a very looooooong tiriiiiiing day ahead.
Friday. Versailes trip
had a quick breakfast and went straight to lille flandre train station. and just minutes on the tgv i already felt very tired for lack of sleep. arrived at gare du nord.
On gare du nord, Ding acted as our tour guide. she really had a very developed sense of direction (which i later learned is actually because of her always holding and reading the map when they are going out as a family).
we must ride the RER which willt ake us to st lazare, which in turn is where the trains to versailles is. after quite some time finding directions on our little adventure we reached versailles. BTW our RER ticket is gratuit because of the eurail.. we were given complimentary violet colored tickets that looked really plain.. well, still I felt very special for having tickets different from the rest of the Parisian passengers. haha
Arriving at Versailes,
the train station there was foul smelling.. amoy tae at suka na hinalo ata.. from this point on our cameras started continuously draining batteries.
Versailles is just like Lille. beautiful but not as grand as the things that await us in the chateau.. im already in versailes but i still dont know what to expect here. i dont even know that chateau is a castle.. all i heard from the SOM people was that versailes was simply breathtaking.
walking outside the station we cant find where the gat to the chateau is, I asked some man who sells orangeade by the market for directions. i was really surprised to find him speak perfect english. he pointed to us a sort of detour to the chateau. in return he asked that we buy some of his orangeade which i bought.. it was good and really fresh... he also had this cool metal machine (manually operated) that does all the squeezing work for him. on the way to chateau meki found to cutely named shops, berenice and mary kimberley. ken found the perfect car for himself.. photo ops!
Chateau de Versailles
arrived at the chateau after 30minute walk. we were welcomed by iron gates and a massive frontyard. Also, we were also welcomed by a line of people buying tickets also as wide as the front yard. good for us we already bought tickets back in paris! the som people said they took 2 hours just to buy tickets to get in. ( haha buti nalng)
"The Palace of Versailles, or simply Versailles, is a royal
château in
Versailles, in the
Île-de-France region of
France.
In
French, it is known as the Château de Versailles. When the château was built, Versailles was a country village; today, however, it is a suburb of
Paris, some twenty kilometers southwest of the French capital. From 1682, when
King Louis XIV moved from Paris, until
the royal family was forced to return to the capital in 1789, the Court of Versailles was the centre of power in
Ancien RégimeFrance. Versailles is therefore famous not only as a building, but as a symbol of the system of
absolute monarchy that Louis XIV espoused. :source WIKIPEDIA
so there wonderfully explained. sa loob tulo-laway ganda at first.. puro engravings and paintings. but after 20 or more rooms seeing the same sight it became quite boring. before long we were already ignoring all the majestic pieces of art that the french laboriously did during the past 300 years. we hurried outside so that we could see the gardens.
pag labas namin grabe mas lalong tulo laway pa.. ang lawak sobra nung place, d mo talaga makikita ung dulo kahit nasa mataas ka. 80hectares daw ung place.. i think it was Ding who commented that we are standing on a place equivalent to 40 ateneo campuses.
more photo ops.. better see the pictures.. its really hard to explain the beauty of it.
aside from the sceneries.. there are also a lot of furry little critters that were extremely friendly to us tourists. first there were the butterflies. they just keep on landing on the most colorful and the biggest flowers. its almost as if they were posing for the cameras. the bees were likewise very friendly towards the cameras. then there were the pigeons. btw they are very fat.. haha you could get as close as 1foot and they still wont fly away. most surprising are the swans and the ducks which are both comfortable with people. they get near instead of flock in fright when people approach them.
we walked and walked and walked. went to marie-antoinette's house. i did not really appreciate the house because i dont know marie antoinete in the first place. i think im gonna watch the movie some of these days. here we had a good time taking pictures of optical illusions of kim and meki on ken's hands.
after the long walk we all felt unable to continue any further, so we sat on the nearest bench that we saw. i immediately fell asleep because i really felt sleepy. i woke up listening to the heart-to-heart conversation of the other 4.. and when they saw me awake ako naman inintriga nila. unfair kasi d ko naman narinig mga pinagkwekwento nilang apat.. haha
after the short but refreshing nap and the fun bonding session. we felt ok to explore versailles more. went to queen's hamlet etc and went straight out of the chateau.
we ate at quick first before boarding the train back to paris.. quick is another popular fast food chain in france. it could be compared to jolibee in the philippines i guess.
we stayed at Paris that night because all trains back to Lille are full. so we were again generously offered by TIta luz to stay at their house. There, we were offered rice and pinoy food again. haha its rice with chinese pansit and spanish-recipe gambas made by tito paul. after we played poker until past midnight and i won. haha slept at their comfy sofa in the living room again. =)