My luxurious Sunday

Salut!

This past Sunday, my friend Monica and I decided to go to Versailles since she's never seen it before and I hadn't been yet this trip. Unfortunately, it was a cold and rainy day, and all of the statues were covered due to the weather, so we had to make our Versailles visit brief. But here's what we did see:


Lovely statue overlooking the pond behind the château. Oh and yes, I took this picture. :)





Here I am standing in front of the gates to the château. It's hard to see through the gates, but they actually had scaffolding covering the front side since they were doing renovations. We just picked a bad day to go I guess. But the gate itself was pretty!





Back side of the château. Same pond as before. The old guy was just as upset as we were about the weather and renovations. Just look at that pouty face!





View of the gardens. Do you see the pond in the back of the picture? That's about halfway to the edge of the gardens. If you walk all the way to that pond and then to the right a bunch, you'll see Marie-Antoinette's Trianons, which are like mini-châteaux that served as her little retreats. We didn't go there on Sunday because of the... yes, the weather. It would be so much nicer to see the Trianons on a sunny day anyway.

Even though the atmosphere was a little gloomy at Versailles, Monica and I made the best of it. I actually took a class on the French Revolution last Spring semester at Georgia Tech, so I taught her a bit about the history of Versailles as it pertains to the Revolution. In exchange, she taught me some Spanish! I grabbed some Spanish pamphlets describing the grounds of Versailles, and I learned some pretty useful phrases throughout the rest of the day, such as "My hands are freezing!", "What in the world is going on?", and "Look there! He's cute!" (ha ha!!!)


After Versailles, we ended up at at the Arc de Triomphe and the Champs-Élysées! I say we 'ended up' there because we actually planned to spend the whole day at Versailles but changed our plans last minute to accomodate the weather. But that always seems to happen when I spend time with Monica- we always end up doing something fun and unexpected!





Here we are in front of the Arc de Triomphe and the round-about of death!! There are no lines on the road and the drivers like to whip around the circles really fast. I heard that there are more accidents here than any other place in Paris. I don't know if that's actually true, but I would totally believe it from what I saw.






Here's a view from under the Arc de Triomphe. They had these HUMONGOUS French and EU flags waving there- it seemed so majestic. By the way, you should appreciate the lengths I went to to take this picture: I stood on various ledges on the monument itself trying to find the perfect angle to capture the majesty of the waving flags. I squatted and bent over backwards...until some French officer politely but firmly told me to get down. But oh well, I still got the picture. For you. You're welcome! :)





Here we are looking pensive. About what? I don't know...but the Arc de Triomphe is in the background!





Monica told me to stand on a light post so she could take this picture. I love the signs behind me (we were on the Champs-Élysées by the way). And especially what's in the distance. After this, we crossed the street at the intersection behind me at almost the last minute and of course, Monica decided to take a picture from the middle of the intersection! We were almost road kill, but the picture came out ok (ha ha)!






After that we strolled along to the Place de la Concorde. Paris is just like us when it comes to setting up early Christmas decorations, and this was part of it! It's a ferris wheel, but if you look closely you can see the little Christmas tree things on the sides. The ferris wheel wasn't running while we were there, but they probably have it running now.

I don't have a picture yet, but right now on the Champs-Élysées, there are these tiny white houses lined up along both sides of the street. Each one had Christmas lights on it, and each one was also locked up so we couldn't see inside. It looked like the makings of a little Christmas craft fair! I'll let you know what it is for sure when I find out.





And to finish off the day, Monica and I headed over to the Mouffetard area, which has a lot of cute restaurants (I had fondue there once) and bars and gelato, and had a hot Irish coffee...it was soooo yummy! It was a fitting ending to a day spent visiting a château and the most chic street in Paris. :)

(Side note: Two of my friends who are from Georgia Tech and doing the same study abroad program as me are also blogging about their experiences here in Paris. One of them, you know: my roommate, Shannon. The other one's name is Emily, and I've mentioned her before in earlier postings. So if you want to see how they're handling life here, check out their blogs too! Sometimes we all talk about the same things, but you might be interested in seeing someone else's perspective... links are on the right side of this page .)

À bientôt! (See you soon!)

Bisous XOXO