Bus buddy + diet coke = A wonderful five hours
Our first stop was Versailles. It's right outside of Paris, so before we actually made it into the city we stopped there. It was freezing. And it's huge. You have to go in with a goal, otherwise you'll get stuck in one room with a pretty ceiling and you'll stand in awe as you try to compare your own house to just that room, and you know, they're probably around the same size. You could probably fit your house and your neighbor's house into that one room, if you really tried. Plus there's the part where the ceilings are so carefully painted with so much detail, and thinking back you remember that your ceilings are white. If you're lucky, you have the popcorn ceilings to add some pizazz - if you're lucky.
This isn't even the full thing. This is practically the entrance, the prologue to a very, very, very thick book. It's also crooked.
Ba-BAM (Use the Raven Symone voice from That's So Raven, s'il vous plaît).
The ceilings!!
And the gardens! (Think gaaaaaaahdens, dahhling)
Strolling through these gardens was a completely different experience for me this time (I visited Versailles with my mom, sister and Auntie Andi in the spring of '07, when the sun was shining and it was much warmer). This stroll was more of a light jog in an attempt to not lose all of my fingers and toes to the glorious temperature outside.
I don't really know what's happening here, but our hotel was right by Place de la Bastille, which was a lovely place to be.
Snow! (And oh look, it's Melanie in the bottom left. Hi Melanie!) It never, ever snows in France. Not in Rennes nor Paris, at least. So this was exciting, unexpected, and cold.
On our walk to the Musée d'Orsay.. it was still snowing!
A lot of bridges in Paris have locks locked to them. Couples & friends attach a lock to the bridge and throw the key in the water to represent their never ending love or something cheesy like that.
At the Musée d'Orsay, we were free to explore at our leisure, no tour guides, no school groups, just a big museum and a lot of time. Jenny and I snuck away from the direct crowd headed for the center stage and went up to the 5th floor: Impressionism. There were 5 rooms filled with Impressionist paintings, and we spent hours staring at them, looking at the frames, the colors, the details and the blurs and discussing what we liked and what we didn't like. We were speaking in French, too, and played this game where, when a French person was nearby, we'd go up to them and ask how to say a certain something in French. Like watering can. Looking at a Degas painting of ballerinas, there was a watering can in the corner, but we weren't sure how to say that. We asked a kind-looking older woman next to us, and not only did we learn that arrosoir meant watering can, we learned that they used them to pour something (I can't remember what) on the floors so that the ballerinas didn't slip.
After the Musée d'Orsay, some of us had a show to see. We were split into two groups, one group to see a show at La Comédie Française on Sunday, and one to see a show on Monday. So after the museum I headed off with Laura and Darby to La Comédie Française to see Troïlus et Cressida, a Shakespeare play translated in French.
We got lost.
Here we have the Paris metro. Let's take a look at number 1. That is where the Musée d'Orsay is, and where we started. Then let's follow the arrow to number two. We sort of followed the river, crossed a bridge, crossed back, walked away from the river to the middle of the city, and then followed the tip of the Eiffle Tower to find our way there, to find a metro station. We get on the metro, take two different ones, and end up at number 3, Palais Royal, our final destination. Let's just say we were a bit late for the show.
These were our "Oh, look, we're in Paris and we're at the metro and we're kind of lost" pictures. Cute, right?
However - it was an adventure. There's nothing like coming to know Paris by getting lost in Paris. And we weren't lost in the oh-my-gosh-where-do-we-go-from-here way, but more of a wow-we're-kind-of-displaced-let's-find-the-nearest-metro. Proper usage of dashes? Probably not.
Blast from the past! I was but a babe the last time I visited Paris..
This Shakespeare play though.. I was not particularly captivated, but uh, neither were many other people. So once we reached intermission we were given permission to leave the theater and roam the streets of Paris, which we did, starting with a café.
Darby and I have a small obsession with mustard. Black & white to make us classy!
That's enough for today, don't you think? Yes, I do believe so. Have a lovely whatever time of day it is!
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