Disclaimer: I don't know how to make the keyboard put accents on the letters so none of the French words in this post will have their proper accents. Please don't be offended.
By our second day in Paris we were masters of the Metro. I have to say out of everywhere we went, Paris had the best transportation system - and it was entirely in another language.
We struggled at first, but after we started changing the names of the stops into things that made sense everything went a lot smoother. Here are a few examples of how we got around:
Take the Volturie (Voltaire) to see Severus Snape (Ponte de Sevres) but stop to visit Denis my old maintenance man (Strasbourg St. Denis), then head over to help out the people in New Orleans after hurricane Katrina (Porte d'Orleans), but get sidetracked in the City (Cite).
Some of our route names were a little more ridiculous...
Take fish (marcadet poissonniers - has the word poisson which is fish) towards Piggy (Marie d'Issy -I don't know how Michael came up with that one), and stop at Lamb-rack (Lamarck Caulaincourt - somehow Lamb-rack made more sense than just Lamarck the person...).
Here are a few more of our name changes:
Boulogne Pont de St. Cloud = cloud
Porte Dauphine = Daphne
Pont de Levallois Becon = bacon
Any French speaker would be appalled.
Dinner the first night. Yummy baguettes, cheese, apples, some sort of sausage, and green juice.
It was all very delicious.
We went to Versailles on our second day because it was the only day we would be there when they turned on the musical fountains in the gardens.
We tried to get there early, but there was still a very long line.
The palace was HUGE!
Michael liked the (fake) golden gate.
The inside was absolutely beautiful. This was the King's private chapel. What really got us though, were the ceilings!
The paintings were so beautiful and everything was so detailed. The Hall of Mirrors was really neat as well.
We took this pic off the internet because there were way too many people to get a good shot.
We both enjoyed the really high canopy beds. It seemed like it was almost a competition as to who get have the highest canopy.
After going through the entire inside of the palace, we decided to take a lunch break and visit the town nearby.
Yumm! Boulangeries/Patisseries were our favorite places to frequent.
French market.
For some reason I really liked this old Lady with her basket.
We stopped for lunch at a creperie, but forgot to take a picture of the food (a first). I was a little flustered because it was our first time ordering food in French. Despite spending hours before our trip listening to "Coffee break French" podcasts, actually being there and ordering for real was a whole different story. What really threw me off is in that for part of it she spoke English, so I thought she knew English and asked her a question in English, which she really didn't understand. It was awkward.
Thankfully I did much better that evening at dinner.
After our lunch break we headed back to the palace to tour the gardens and the Marie-Antoinette estate.
They had some fabulous fountains. It was so neat that all of the fountains were running through pressure and not by any electrical/mechanical means.
Our little alcove that we really liked. They had some good opera music playing. This fountain was pretty cool. We only realized at the very end that the thing in the mans hand is a human heart.
Much of the day was spent walking. The place was huge.
I tried to find a good picture showing how big the whole place was but I couldn't find a very good one. This one shows only the gardens; there is a whole other estate that we visited. Apparently with everything, the whole place was originally around 2000 acres. Crazy.
We had to use another online pic to show one of Michael's favorites. See all of those hedge-like things along the water in the back? Those are full-sized trees cut to look like hedges. Neat.
After the gardens we headed over to the Marie Antoinette Estate.
Here we have the Grand Trianon, also known as the King's cabin. Apparently it's a place where the King could retreat to when he was tired of all the grandness of the palace...still seems pretty grand to me.
The Petit Trianon, or cabin's cabin. If this is a cabin's cabin, I'll settle for the outhouse!
Me tired of walking.
Cute cobblestone roadway
So we spent hours upon hours walking around the palace and the gardens that we had very little time to explore the Marie-Antoinette Estate. So of course we were running around trying to see as much of it as we could before they kicked us out, that is when we came upon the real gem of the place: The Hameau de la Reine. It was a cute little village in the middle of the estate. Apparently Marie Antoinette wanted to feel like she was in the middle of the countryside instead of in the confines of the palace estate.
Such short stubby little legs
After being chased out of the estate after closing, we headed back to the nearby town for dinner.
We went to a place recommended by Rick Steve's which turned out to be very tasty.
Of course we had to order all the traditional items.
For a starter I had escargot, which I have had before and love.
Michael had some delicious French onion soup.
For the main course I had duck.
And Michael had this...
Yes, that is raw meat with a raw egg in the middle. On the menu it said traditional beef tartar, Michael saw the word traditional and ordered it with no questions asked. We were both a little surprised when they came out with this and had a hard time keeping a straight face. I am proud to say that Michael ate the entire thing, what a sport!
It was a very good day.
Also we saw this...oh McDonald's, you are so good at being multicultural.
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