May 23

Today we went to Versailles.  It was about a 30 minute train ride from Paris and I belive worth it all.  I thought the train would take straight to the Chateau, however it took us to the town that had sprung up around it and it was only like a five minute walk to the chateau from there.

Immediatley after disembarking we were handed flyers concerning a paid guided tour, we went to scope it out and their main sell was that we could skip the standard 45 minute wait to get it, whe thought about it however we decided against it since the next tour they were doing was almost that long of a wait before starting.

Smart move on our part b/c after we got there we had to only wait to buy our tickets before the adventure began.  In addition to the regular admission for a little extra we got admittance to Maries Antionettes estate as well, as as we would find out it was quite worth the extra euros. 

The ticket price included an audioguide and it was quite complete with things to listen to in nearly every room.  The chateau to me was over the top opulance, as me and rebecca joked, "It must have been decorated by a guy".  It was full of apinting guilted furnaiture, rich curtains, and scultpture.  The gardens of versailles were amazing.  I could just get lost there, I would go again not pay anything and just wander around back there.  IN fact we did see many locals running around and excerising in the area!  At the back of the expansive gardens is where Marie Antionettes estate was.  If you have seen the movie, or actually know the history of her, this is where she spent most of her time living plying milkmaid as they put it.  The estate consisted of the Grand Trition, the Petite Trition and the hamlet.  These to me were more gorgeous than Versailles, they were so pictureque and elegantly situated into the landscape of the area.  I would live there!  I thought "this is a womans taste"  Soft pallete of colors, pinks, creams and not overly fussy trims, just classy.  The hamlet was straight up french countryside, and very medevial looking.  It had the thatched roofs and was situated around a pond that had lilly pads.  I was surprised how expansive they whole area was, it seemed it was all alone in the country.  The gardens by here estates were the most pretty.  There were little brooks that had been engineered back in the day and were still babbling, pretty gazebos and pathways, fragrant flowers, just plain amazing.  Rebecca and I thought who could say no to a propsal here!

We spent the whole day there and then that night we met up with Coral at her hotel.  We treid to see the effiel tower sparkle, it does so on the hour at 10, 11, and 12 for 10-15 minutes.  So we are on our way trying to beat the clock t the 11 sparkle and then the metro we wanted to take was underconstruction so we were stuck and ended up exiting and trying to get our bearing on the street.  I was like look for the tower....and there it was sparkling and we had the most beautiful photo opt, the seine was right there and we had pics on a bridge over the water with the tower in the back ground.  After that we went to Champs again and ate a nice resturant outside.  We all split a pizza and had wine.  The pizza had chorizo and bellpeppers on it. Coral bought me my first drink, a bourdeaux and I told her not to b/c i didnt think i would like wine...sure enought sip one told me all i needed to know about red wines...tooo much bitterness.  I think i forced a 10th of the glass down to show that i was thankful, but my dislike was apparent.  For dessert I had some of paris famous bellegrino? ice cream with pears, whipped cream , almonds and chocolate syrup.  There was choclate and im guessing french vanilla ice cream.  It was quite rich...but i ate it all, lol.

After that we took a taxi back to the hostel to make our curfew of 2 am, it was in that dang taxi that I believe i left my Digital Camera, along with all my photo memories of paris including: sparkiing effiel, cartwheels at versailles, my hostel room, and views from the effiel and notre dame...of well i will always have them in my heart.