sans savoir où ça le mène // without knowing where it leads

I find it soothing and immensely helpful to write out all my blog entries and/or essays before I type them up. Maybe it's just me, but I think the entries end up flowing better. Words come more easily to me this way, and I like being able to revise as I am typing things up.

...but I digress.

Two days ago (as in samedi, 26.09.09), I went to Versailles. It was truly the home of the Sun King...and I was clearly in the wrong about the National Assembly being too opulent. You do not know opulent until you've been to Versailles.

I took the train to Versailles on a crisp, sunny morning. My Carte Imagine R had arrived the day before, so I was in an extremely good mood despite having had to get up early. (My Asian brain releases endorphins like no other every time I manage to avoid paying for something, you see, and thus the fact that I no longer had to pay an arm and a leg for transportation effectively put me on Cloud Nine.) Upon arrival, my life was made even better as we found out that the people who had set the whole thing up for us had made reservations for us as a group. This meant that we got to skip the long line that stretched all the way to Denmark and go directly into the chateau. And thus, I began my tour of Le Roi Soleil's domain.

I was told that there is always some part of Versailles that is under construction. In addition, the wings of the chateau are not accessible to the public as that is where Le Sénat and l'Assemblée Nationale convene whenver they deign it necessary to talk to each other. But the rest of the property was pretty much up for grabs.

We started with a tour of the chateau itself.

At first, I was staring wide-eyed at everything I saw and snapping pictures feverishly. After all, it was Versailles.

This is my knight in shining armor.

Don't worry, R.B. I will never again make the mistake of saying, "some random ceiling" in your presence. Thus, this is a very impressive ceiling done by a very-impressive-and-probably-famous artist.


The famous Hall of Glass.


People were really agog over the bed of Louis XIV. My audioguide described the various entrances to his bedroom; apparently there was a small one reserved solely for courtesans.


Where do you think they got the idea to turn Han Solo into metal in Star Wars?


Trompe-l'oeil: "to fool the eye." This is a painting, not a carving.


The mirrors were kind of dirty.

After a while, though, the rooms all started to look the same to me: each and every one of them lavishly decorated, elegant, and maybe a bit over the top. Maybe I just prefer the simpler things in life?

Anyway, I stopped taking pictures until we got outside. The gardens and landscaping at Versailles were by far my favorite part of it.

One of the many "bodies of water" at Versailles. This picture was taken on the steps of the chateau.


This guy didn't know how to row. He's about to maroon himself and his girlfriend.


This is another body of water. I was just taking a picture of the landscape, but this random old woman walked in and turned around at the last moment, so this is a good touristy picture of her.


...I want to get married at Versailles...


Pretty flowers from one of the gardens.


Marie Antoinette had a little hamlet built for herself so that she could come here and pretend to be a peasant/shepherdess every time she got tired of court intrigue.

By the time we got to the hamlet, my friends and I had long been separated from the main group (we'd taken a wrong turn somewhere? Or maybe we took too long for lunch...) After a bit more sightseeing, we decided to hightail it back to the city. Back in Paris, we went to a crêperie in Montparnasse for dinner.

Après avoir dîné, because I was obviously filled with limitless energy, M. & I met up with some friends for a night out on the town. We managed to catch Happy Hour this time, so I didn't have to sell my body to afford a drink. The waiter at the bar/café/restaurant that we were at was very cute and illegally surreptitiously gave us a copy of their menu as we left. I'd like to think that it was because he noticed how much we enjoyed it, but it was probably due to the fact that K. & I were inundating him with questions about whether or not there was a paper copy/a version of it online somewhere.

Why such a big deal for a menu?

Because everyone loves franglais, of course! Also, it was nice to know that while we were incompetent in French, the French were also not as good en anglais.

In this picture, note the "salad of goat (tackle in sheet of brick)" and the "white cake in the coke, the coulis of red fruit."


In this one, note the "crunch lady" and the "tartar of Salmon has the dill."

This is how I spend most of my weekends in Paris: mostly being classy with a little bit of fun thrown in. Other times I am a homebody and don't do anything interesting.

As always, there are more pictures, including those where you can see my face clearly, on facebook.