Euro Trip Day 14
October 9th - Thursday
This day appears to have deserved a lot of photos. Versaille with lame modern art below the cut!
Today we headed out to Versailles which is a short train trip outside of Paris. Versailles was the seat of the French Court during a the reign of a bunch of Louis.
All the Glory of France - for 13 euros!
You pay to get into the mansion which is room after room of glorious french wealth - the ceilings are all painted in amazing storied detail, and artwork adorns every wall. You get to see fancy king bearing beds (it should be noted that beds for Kings don't appear to be king sized), giant glass chandeliers and in our case a really, terribly, embarrassingly out of place modern art exhibit.
This purple chrome balloon doggie is NOT what I expected in the first room we walked into.
Then in the next room they had replaced one of the chandeliers with an inflatable lobster. All the Glory of France?
At this point I was on the move, and didn't have time for the crazy modern art weirdness - but I snapped this on my way past. It appears to be a vacuum cleaner exhibit.
Now this is more like it!
The hall of mirrors. The big mirrors on the left are lined up with the big doors on the right. From the outside and far away if you look in, you see the sky reflected off these mirrors. The effect is that you appear to be looking through the building.
But where there are mirrors, there is an easy way to get a 'couples' photo!
But the place was WAY too crowded. People were gawking at the ceiling while walking and bumping into you, and you had to weave through throngs of people listening to the little walkman tour guide, stalling in boring rooms causing huge traffic jams.
By the time we got to one long hallway that had giant paintings of battles the French took part in, I was kind of sick of annoying, bumper-car crowds. It's too bad, this hallway had the only paintings in Europe that I had seen so far that I cared to spend time looking at.
Napoleon winning one of those many battles he won.
Were I to do it again, I'd skip the indoor part - which required a long ticket line and something like 13 euros each to get into. The amazing, endless gardens behind the buildings were free (unless you go on a special 'fountain' day - I think maybe Sundays).
This is actually a picture I took from inside, yearning to find my way OUT of this crowded place. Same with this next one taken some time later, when I started looking to see if the windows were locked.
Just check out the google satelite view:
Versailles
It doesn't really do it justice however. These gardens go on FOREVER. Standing at the building, the tiny U-shaped thing (which is not actually tiny) on the right and looking west you can see straight to the end of the garden. But towards the end, the haze of the air starts to blur the details - it's that far. The big fat cross you see is a big man-made pool, they call a canal.
This goes to show just how big the tiny little building on google maps really is, to give you a sense of perspective.
This picture was taken from the same spot as the one above it. That's the canal.
We walked around and snacked on ice cream until our feet were sore. The woods on either side of the main paths hold lots of tiny fountains and hidden pathways, seemingly endless. You can rent transportation to get around the garden if you want to see more than a small fraction of it. The transportation modes are varied - golf cart, segway, and bicycle (your choice of one or two seated!).
RAR!
She appears unconcerned about the dangers of the stompy foot. (This was supposed to be a cute 'look, you can see my shadow too' kind of photo).
Oh yeah, and you can rent a boat on the canals too! But jossel really took this picture cause of the cool spikes on the fence.
This is a look back at Versailles from before the canals. That fountain with all the horses bursting out of it has to be famous, I swear I've seen it on postcards.
When we got back to Paris we ate a relatively early meal in the Republique square area. We had intended to go to a place we had seen on the way to do laundry, but could not resist this place called Indiana Cafe - with lots of old west photos everywhere, and Tex Mex style food. We just had to know what French Tex Mex would be like - we weren't even sure how a french person would say the words Tex Mex - what with lopping off the end of words and all. I joked that their BBQ was "Bar-Beh-Quoi?". That joke is almost funny out-loud, you'll just have to trust me on that one.
It was happy hour too - so half-off beers on tap. Sadly, the beers on tap were of styles that they must have felt were American - ie. pale and not super interesting. jossel had a veggie enchilada she says was fine, and I had a chimichanga (honestly, can't resist a chimichanga). It wasn't really super well fried, but it was ok. So ultimately it kind of met our expectations.
They did however have MTV on, with lots of old videos like "Beat It". That was kind of rough, because jossel was singing the rest of the night.
This day appears to have deserved a lot of photos. Versaille with lame modern art below the cut!
Today we headed out to Versailles which is a short train trip outside of Paris. Versailles was the seat of the French Court during a the reign of a bunch of Louis.
All the Glory of France - for 13 euros!
You pay to get into the mansion which is room after room of glorious french wealth - the ceilings are all painted in amazing storied detail, and artwork adorns every wall. You get to see fancy king bearing beds (it should be noted that beds for Kings don't appear to be king sized), giant glass chandeliers and in our case a really, terribly, embarrassingly out of place modern art exhibit.
This purple chrome balloon doggie is NOT what I expected in the first room we walked into.
Then in the next room they had replaced one of the chandeliers with an inflatable lobster. All the Glory of France?
At this point I was on the move, and didn't have time for the crazy modern art weirdness - but I snapped this on my way past. It appears to be a vacuum cleaner exhibit.
Now this is more like it!
The hall of mirrors. The big mirrors on the left are lined up with the big doors on the right. From the outside and far away if you look in, you see the sky reflected off these mirrors. The effect is that you appear to be looking through the building.
But where there are mirrors, there is an easy way to get a 'couples' photo!
But the place was WAY too crowded. People were gawking at the ceiling while walking and bumping into you, and you had to weave through throngs of people listening to the little walkman tour guide, stalling in boring rooms causing huge traffic jams.
By the time we got to one long hallway that had giant paintings of battles the French took part in, I was kind of sick of annoying, bumper-car crowds. It's too bad, this hallway had the only paintings in Europe that I had seen so far that I cared to spend time looking at.
Napoleon winning one of those many battles he won.
Were I to do it again, I'd skip the indoor part - which required a long ticket line and something like 13 euros each to get into. The amazing, endless gardens behind the buildings were free (unless you go on a special 'fountain' day - I think maybe Sundays).
This is actually a picture I took from inside, yearning to find my way OUT of this crowded place. Same with this next one taken some time later, when I started looking to see if the windows were locked.
Just check out the google satelite view:
Versailles
It doesn't really do it justice however. These gardens go on FOREVER. Standing at the building, the tiny U-shaped thing (which is not actually tiny) on the right and looking west you can see straight to the end of the garden. But towards the end, the haze of the air starts to blur the details - it's that far. The big fat cross you see is a big man-made pool, they call a canal.
This goes to show just how big the tiny little building on google maps really is, to give you a sense of perspective.
This picture was taken from the same spot as the one above it. That's the canal.
We walked around and snacked on ice cream until our feet were sore. The woods on either side of the main paths hold lots of tiny fountains and hidden pathways, seemingly endless. You can rent transportation to get around the garden if you want to see more than a small fraction of it. The transportation modes are varied - golf cart, segway, and bicycle (your choice of one or two seated!).
RAR!
She appears unconcerned about the dangers of the stompy foot. (This was supposed to be a cute 'look, you can see my shadow too' kind of photo).
Oh yeah, and you can rent a boat on the canals too! But jossel really took this picture cause of the cool spikes on the fence.
This is a look back at Versailles from before the canals. That fountain with all the horses bursting out of it has to be famous, I swear I've seen it on postcards.
When we got back to Paris we ate a relatively early meal in the Republique square area. We had intended to go to a place we had seen on the way to do laundry, but could not resist this place called Indiana Cafe - with lots of old west photos everywhere, and Tex Mex style food. We just had to know what French Tex Mex would be like - we weren't even sure how a french person would say the words Tex Mex - what with lopping off the end of words and all. I joked that their BBQ was "Bar-Beh-Quoi?". That joke is almost funny out-loud, you'll just have to trust me on that one.
It was happy hour too - so half-off beers on tap. Sadly, the beers on tap were of styles that they must have felt were American - ie. pale and not super interesting. jossel had a veggie enchilada she says was fine, and I had a chimichanga (honestly, can't resist a chimichanga). It wasn't really super well fried, but it was ok. So ultimately it kind of met our expectations.
They did however have MTV on, with lots of old videos like "Beat It". That was kind of rough, because jossel was singing the rest of the night.