Paris Day 3 - Versailles and the Louvre

 Today, due to scheduling, we tried to cram both Versailles and the Louvre into one day. We should've done Versailles yesterday afternoon and spent the whole day today at the Louvre because Versailles didn't take as long as I thought it would.

The train to Versailles was quick and there was a lonely taxi sitting outside the station that we paid a few euro to take us to the main palace instead of walking 20 minutes or (since there are four of us the same price) paying to use the bus.

We were maybe the 8th in line at 8:30 for our scheduled time to get in at 9:00. By the time 9:00 rolled around there were probably a couple hundred people in line. It was really annoying when some lady and her daughter budged in behind us at 8:55.

French people know how to make a line unlike the Italians. Overall it feels like we're in a first world country, unlike Italy which feels like a third world country that has first world makeup on.

Gardens out the window

Royal Chapel, 2nd floor

Meeting room / ballroom

One of the king's bedrooms. 300 or 400 year old clock (that still works) that has the king pop out. We didn't wait to see if that is true. It did have the right time.

Hall of mirrors

Another bedroom, nobles would have to compete or sign up to be involved in the ritual of the king waking up.

Later, the empire era, there are a bunch of Napoleon propaganda paintings. Here he is crowned emperor in a giant wall sized painting.

Emperor of France and King of Italy

The apartments and other rooms went on and on.

The gardens. We didn't spend as much time here as we could've, nor did we visit Trianon. They are acres and acres of gardens, fountains, and pools.

The Louvre

We got back to the hotel room earlier than expected so rested a bit before catching the bus again. As we had booked tickets for 4pm and arrived at 3:35 we sailed right in - this is a trick I've discovered that often works. 

The Louvre was pretty packed inside and is a maze. Definitely need most of the day to see it. We had a couple hours and saw the highlights but the maze like layout made it very frustrating. I was pissed off most of the time trying to navigate through the maze.

We mistakenly ended up in the sculptures area, which was incredible, but we mainly wanted to see paintings with our limited time as we had seen a lot of sculptures. We spent the next half hour trying to get where we were going, but did look at things as we went. Part of the problem with the layout is because it used to be a palace for French kings before being converted currently into a museum.

A few well known paintings that were cool to see. Many of them were giant, like 20-30 feet across.

We also briefly saw the Mona Lisa, from a distance of maybe 20 feet. We didn't feel like standing in line.

The Winged Victory was also neat. I did my best to take a photo without a million people in it.

After that we went for supper and then went to bed since the train to the Loire Valley leaves at 6am.

Paris Day 2

 Today was a full day in Paris but we slept in a little bit due to the late night before. The morning and early afternoon was spent at a famous department store, Les Galleries Lafayette Hausmann, which was started around 125 years ago. The store takes up around a block of space and is 7 or so stories tall. The departments are setup in rings and floors with an atrium and a large dome in the middle. I told Scarlett if she was going to shop she should shop here:

They had a lot of very expensive things (designer brands like Gucci etc.) and some things that weren't too crazy. We ate at the fanciest food court I've ever seen.

On the roof there is a pretty good view of the city and unlike some other places, this view is free. Somehow the sun was really hard on the eyes even though it was cloudy so hard not to squint without sunglasses. Anyway, we left and took the metro for a quick stop at La Place Concorde.

Place Concorde is where they chopped everyone's heads off during the revolution. It is a nice square now and has some nice monuments including an obelisk from Luxor in Egypt that is over 2000 years old that the French stole. The Arc De Triomphe is off in the distance and the road between is quite famous. We may try to go see it closer tomorrow.

We took the metro again back to the Eiffel Tower area and bought some stuff for a picnic there before returning to the hotel. I messed around trying to figure out exactly how to get to Versailles and almost lost my mind because nowhere was clear that you can't book train tickets ahead. Tina figured out how to get over to Notre Dame so we went there to have a quick look at the Ile de la Cite area.