Palais de Versailles

Today we visited the over-the-top, ornate, gold-plated, beauty of the Palace of Versailles. Before I get into the palace itself, I have to say that we have been navigating the subway and trains here quite well! Also, the people here are extremely helpful everywhere we have gone. Everyone told me that Parisians will not speak English to you but (much to my disappointment) that has not been the case at all! I took years of French in school and so I brushed up in preparation for this trip, thinking I would need to be the translator for us all. However, we must just look like Americans because people usually start speaking to us in English everywhere we go. I'm trying to speak to people in French first, though, simply because I want to get a chance to use this language I spent years studying! Anyway, I'm glad there are people who speak English when we need it because we certainly did when taking the train this morning to Versailles. We had to take a commuter train (one of the nicest and cleanest I've ever seen, complete with mood-enhancing lighting) out to the palace and it was a lovely ride...

When we got to the palace, I was so glad we bought timed tickets ahead of time because pretty much every tourist in Paris was there! We got in (relatively) quickly and started through this elaborate retreat for Kings Louis XIV, V and XVI. Here are a few of the pictures from the palace itself...

Almost every wall was adorned with beautiful paintings and I read in one of the tour books that if you stretched out all the paintings in Versailles, you would have seven miles of canvas! Just about every ceiling was also covered in paintings. Elaborate is basically the only word I can think of to describe it all. My favorite room was the Hall of Mirrors...

After the Hall of Mirrors were several other rooms, including the King's and Queen's respective bedrooms and the Hall of Battles...

We had lunch in the tearoom that was part of the palace and refueled for our visit to the gardens. If we thought the palace was enormous, the gardens were even bigger! 250 acres to be exact. Of course, we did not cover all that ground but we walked through some of the gardens and down to the Grand Canal. It was stunningly beautiful...

On our way from the train station to the Palace (about a mile walk) we noticed this amazing looking Boulangerie (bakery) and made a note to stop on the way back. Here I was able to use my French to order two eclairs for the boys and a raspberry tart for myself. Fortunately, Jonathan was not able to finish all of his eclair and I had a bite. Oh my goodness was that delicious!

The town of Versailles is beautiful too with tree-lined walkways and lovely shops that (if we had no children with us) I'm sure we could wander through all day...

When you eat the food here, you realize the high quality everything is outside of the US. The bread is amazing, the coffee is amazing, even the butter is amazing! And we had to pop into a pharmacy for something and guess what? No crappy snack food! Everything just tastes better here (and not just here, I found this to be the case in Ireland too). It is just fun to notice the differences between here and the US... Also today, we probably walked about 4 miles total if not more and our boys handled it quite well!

Last night, we had dinner at a lovely cafe on the left bank and then wandered though the outdoor part of the Louvre, which is directly across the river from where we are staying. We will be checking out the Louvre tomorrow!

 This last picture is the street where our hotel is!

Americans in Paris

We made it to Paris yesterday morning and have already made a full two days of it! Flying overnight to Europe puts you in a crazy time warp where no one really has a grasp of what day it is or what time it is or anything! Everyone was very excited to travel and we had a smooth time of it Sunday into Monday...

After checking into the hotel and dropping our bags off, we wandered over to the Seine River and took the Batobus (hop-on, hop-off boat) down the river to the Eiffel Tower and wandered around that area for awhile...

After our wandering, we were finally able to get into our room for a short rest before venturing out again. Everyone was ready for a nap after sleeping a total of 2 hours during our travels! The hotel is lovely and in a very good location.

After our naps, we headed out on the Batobus once more to see the other part of the Seine that we didn't see before. We explored the outside of Notre Dame and Ile de la Cite and headed to a cafe for dinner. Everyone raves about the cafes here and I can see why. On a beautiful day, you can just sit outside and slowly enjoy your meal/coffee/wine and people watch!

Notre Dame was always on my "to see" list, ever since I took French in school and we studied about the landmarks of Paris. Obviously since the fire in May it has been closed but it was still very cool to see it from the outside!

After dinner, we walked back to the hotel where everyone proceeded to sleep for over 12 hours, which was lovely. We woke up and it was 8:30! (J slept even longer than that). Good thing too because we did a lot of traveling around the city today! After this yummy breakfast...

... we set off by Metro to the Arc de Triomphe. I love that our boys see riding the subway as exciting as seeing this major Parisian landmark!

These boys were troopers because you have to climb all (however many--hundreds?) of steps to get to the top of the Arc. Everyone definitely got their leg workouts in today! After visiting the Arc, we wandered down the Champs Elysees and stopped for a cafe lunch along the way. The boys got their wish--Nutella crepes for lunch!

We walked the full length of the Champs Elysees and ended up at the Place de la Concorde (site of many executions during the French Revolution) where we then boarded the subway for our next destination...

Our next stop of the day was the Musee de l'Armee which is also the site of Napoleon's tomb. Brian did an independent study about Napoleon in college so he found this spot particularly interesting! In addition to the tomb, we saw some cool exhibits about the French army's uniforms, weapons, and other tools through the years...

It was time to head back to the hotel via subway and unfortunately, we got caught in a little rain so we came back soaked. But it was definitely an adventure! Good thing for hairdryers and towel drying racks! Here are a couple more Metro pictures because, despite the fact that we are seeing some of the most iconic landmarks in the world, the subway is still the coolest thing to these boys...