France Day 11

Today I got up at 7am on the dot even though I hadn’t set an alarm. I am not sure why but I went with it. My plans were to take the RER to Versailles and see the palace and the gardens there. The RER has a line that runs along the river then eventually ends out at Versailles where it is a 5 minute walk to the palace. It was very easy to get there once off the train but I had to get to the river to do that part. I opted to walk down La Fayette and then head to the river at Opera. I made one small incorrect turn but righted myself after a short bit and found the entrance to the station in front of the Musée D’Orsay. I showed my pass and the guy gave me free tickets to get on at that stop and because there was no ticket needed to exit at Versailles also a ticket to get back off when I returned. The RER is the Paris commuter line system to the suburbs. The Metro is the in city subway. The Corail runs intercity trains and I then there is the Ter line system which seems like it does the same as the intercities in the form of routes but also makes a lot more stops along the way. All of these are headed by SNCF which is the main France rail company so far as I can tell.

Getting out at Versailles the weather wasn’t terribly great. It was not really cool but not really hot and damp. It had rained overnight and was not raining really by this point but was misty and foggy rather. The first thing I can say about the palace of Versailles is it is very, very crowded. There were so many people here it could have been Disney. In any event I had a small struggle through an undisciplined line to buy my pass to all the sites and then I entered the palace. The pass covered an audio guide and I would have liked to get one but there was a very huge and undisciplined line already waiting to get them. If it had looked orderly I would probably have tried to wait it out but I cannot tolerate lines that shift and people try to shove ahead and the like so I just chose to skip it completely.

All of the rooms of the Palace were jam packed with people and with guided tours either from tour companies that bring people in or also I think from the palace itself though I suspect those were probably in French only. Through the way I heard tours in Spanish, Italian, Chinese, Japanese and German along with English and French. It seemed that each new room you could enter had another tour guide telling his particular story about that particular room for his particular tour. In any event the place is absolutely huge and though I am sure a fair portion of it has been restored from the original it looked in very good shape overall. Some of the rooms like the Hall of Mirrors were very spectacular. There was similar hall in a previous castle I had visited but this was much more impressive in its effect. I think it might actually have been the city hall in Stockholm…

The wander through the apartments probably took me something along the lines of an hour and change but would have been shorter if I was not always getting blocked by people. After the apartments I went out and started walking through the gardens and fountains area. This is gigantic in scope and made the gardens behind the palace in Compiegne seem like small change in comparison. While in the gardens I ended up having lunch at one of the little outdoor restaurants in the garden. I had a pizza and beer. It was decent pizza, the dough was thicker than the other one I had. I ate that fairly quickly and for whatever reason service didn’t make me sit around for another 20 minutes after I was done. I was very surprised by this. From lunch I wandered the gardens a bit more then headed to the Marie Antoinette apartments which are two sets of smaller buildings off set from the rest of the palace. They were included in the price of admission I paid as was the gardens. You can buy each individually or get the whole pass which is cheaper in the long haul which is why I got the whole pass. I saw a lot of people shelling out money for more tickets at the smaller ticket booths in these locations seeming surprised that what they bought didn’t include these other places. The Grande Traison and the Petite Traison were each in turn smaller than the other and not remotely as big as the palace but there were still a lot of rooms in these seemingly smaller buildings and a lot of wealth as well. There were more gardens here for this area as well. In scope it seemed Versailles encompasses several New York City blocks when including everything I did and didn’t visit.

When I was finished with Versailles I got back on the train to Paris except that they had to shut that one down due to a malfunction of some sort so I got on the next one. All trains leading out of Versailles head to Paris anyway and make the same stops. It just delayed me about 20 minutes. I was in an empty car practically until a pile of high school age kids came in and made it the noisiest car on the train I think. In any event they got out before I did so the last few stops were much quieter.

My mission after getting out of the train was to find the touristy shops to buy things at. I had a relatively good guess where to go but I was not 100% certain. I crossed back over the river and headed towards the Louvre guessing that the street opposite it on the far side from the river would be the place to look. I was right. I had already bought some stuff at Versailles and I bought something here, but the main reason for this was to know where to look on day 12, which is ultimately my last day in France because I head the airport early on Thursday. Then it was a matter of turning my way back into Opera which I had found almost by accident and the turning up La Fayette and into Chabrol where I got to the hotel at about 5pm. By the time I was pulling in the sun was actually out and there was a very unpleasant humid heat. I think I drank about 10 glasses of water then washed myself up a bit because I had 3 layers on from the start of the day weather.

I rested up a bit then opted to go out and find dinner. Before I got food I wanted to replenish my Euros on hand so I walked back to a BNP ATM on La Fayette which unfortunately was a lot further away than I thought, probably about halfway back to Opera, maybe further. Either way I got my money and headed back towards Gare de L’Est and looked at a couple of the places I had considered for dinner the night before. It was still early by French terms but there were some people in a couple of the places and I chose one that had 3 people eating. One person solo and a couple (that turned out to be German) and a few people drinking. I actually didn’t get the name of the place. Since I was early and there were very few people in there the waitress was very attentive and very nice. She realized that I spoke English as my main language and tried to accommodate me as much as she could with English though she was a bit limited on that front as I am with French. In any event I chose a set menu of three courses. For starter I chose the French onion soup, if only on the guarantee I knew what it was. For the meal I chose Chicken with Romanin sauce not really knowing what that was, and basmati rice as an accompaniment. The soup was very good. It was actually my first every French onion soup (I am not a soup person) and the cheese was very stringy and the crusty bread sopped the broth well. I enjoyed it. It wasn’t too salty. The chicken turned out to have a very light brown sauce on it. I could not tell totally what the flavoring was supposed to be. It was definitely very savory. I found that I liked the flavor the more I ate it though perhaps my initial reaction wasn’t as good. When I finished this my meal came with a dessert and I chose the glaces (ice cream), two scoops – chocolate and vanilla, and I had an espresso to go with it. By the way if I haven’t mentioned it an espresso is what you get when you order a coffee after dinner. I think I might have before but I don’t want to make is seem entirely like I am espresso hound no matter how much I like espresso.

While I was eating I had fancied the notion of going back to the Eiffel Tower to perhaps get some pictures at night to finish off the evening but when I stood up I realized that my legs had completely finished off their day and were on protest so I headed back to the room to call it a night. The Eiffel Tower from my hotel is about a 45 minute walk, probably more and I wasn’t going to make it back easily in the dark even if I got there. I will attempt to do that on Wednesday if I can but since I am a morning and not a night person I cannot guarantee anything on the matter.