Oui Oui Paris

Sorry to have missed a day everyone, but I'm afraid this will become more common as I get closer to the chaperone part of my travels. Here in Paris the challenge is that Ashley has an internet connection, but, since she's a student and all, she has to use her computer herself most of the time! Jeez.

But yesterday I did manage to get out to Varsailles: It was a lot easier to get to than I thought it would be--you just take the suburban train all the way out, which from where Ashley lives in the middle of the city was only like a half and hour. Very nice. But you get there, and proceed to get extremely confused about which ticket does what--does the A ticket get out in to everything, or is it the B ticket, or is it the B-to-the-power-of-2 ticket (I'm not kidding, that's what it said). I wandered around for a while and then, like a burst of sunshine in the rain, I heard the dulcet tones of Mandarin Chinese coming from the couple next door to me. And the female of the couple spoke French! I proceeded to follow them around for a bit until the man noticed that my purse had Chinese characters on it, which opened up the conversation between us. He works for HP in Beijing and she lives in France, and why don't you see the museum with us? It was wonderful! When we were getting our audio guides for the tour, the woman even asked me if I wanted mine in Chinese or English, how sweet. English please. (By the way, you have to pay freaking 20 euro to see freaking Versailles. Jeez. And no student discount!)

Versailles is big and impressive, very what you would think of as Louis the 14th French. This is the King's bedroom, of the elaborate getting-up ceremony fame.

And it is VERY ornately embellished with gold, everywhere.

The tallest building on site is the church, which I liked. Mostly for the organ. Which is mostly the reason I like any church.

This is the famous Hall of Mirrors, which was supposed to have had no rival in all the world in its day. Guests were taken through here with the sole purpose of being impressed with the Sun King.

The ceiling of the Hall of Mirrors, incredible. Actually, the art all over the palace is quite amazing, and almost every ceiling in all of Versailles resembles this one, only with different themes. The King had seven antechambers, each with the theme of a different Roman god painted on the ceiling. The room right before you got the the King featured Apollo, as befits the Sun King.

The Queen's Bedroom. I know the picture isn't the greatest, but see that door in the lower left? That's the 'secret door' through which Marie Antoinette fled the rioters before the Terror. (An aside: and when I say before the Terror, I mean this in a very general way--I don't remember the dates for any of this, Ashley I were just able to come up with the idea that Marie had to flee the palace sometime before it. It's the best we've got.)

The gardens outside Versailles are HUGE. Also very French in that everything is symmetrical and orderly and just so. Ashley says the French think English gardens, which to me are extremely structured, are crazily wild. Go figure.

At certain times of the day, the museum will broadcast music from the period that Versailles was in use over the gardens and turn on all the fountains. Very impressive.

I particularly liked this one--it's the god Poseidon, can you see? Water is shooting from his mouth in the middle, and you can see a hand in the front right and a knee in the front left.

Today I slept basically the entire day, but I'm ok with that, I'm on holiday. Ashley and I did walk down to the Eiffel Tower, however, during a break from my napping and a break from her writing. And so, the obligatory Eiffel Tower picture!