Thornock Happenings 2016: France Trip Post #8

Wednesday, May 21st

Our train rolled into the Paris station at 7:00 am and we were feeling pretty great! I think we both slept well (except when I had to get up to use the bathroom, which you can't do unless the train is moving, and we were stopped at a station for like 30 minutes, and I kind of wanted to cry because I had to go so badly). We found a nice bathroom to use at the station (for a small fee), where we brushed our teeth and washed up a little bit. Then we set off to find a place to buy our day passes for public transportation and a train to Versailles! We ate some chocolate breads for breakfast while we were on the train.

We made it to Versailles before the palace opened, so we walked the gardens first. I think it was about 8:00 and the palace opened at 9:00. It was absolutely perfect though! It hadn't started raining yet, and the gardens were almost completely empty. We did all the walking we wanted to do and took pictures and enjoyed the nice, cool, quiet morning.

When we wandered back to the palace, the lines of tourists had already started to form, so we went to get our tickets. Well, we tried an automated machine and the dang thing took our 30 euros and then broke before it printed our tickets!! So, I had to find a person to come help us. Luckily, they believed me and led us to the front of the very long line to buy tickets from real people.

Then we went outside, in front of the palace, to get in the very, very long line to get into the palace. It was raining, so we decided to go find some food and come back in a while. We found a pizza place eventually. It was good pizza, but the rain didn't stop, so we went to the still very, very long line and just accepted the fact that we would be wet.

The inside of the palace was amazing! I'm so glad that we did Versailles. We had audio-guides that explained different rooms and the artwork and had english audio for videos playing around the palace. There were a lot of people, so the rooms were pretty crowded, but we got to stay in each room for as long as we wanted to before moving on to the next one.

After the palace, we made our way back to the train station, stopping by some tourist shops along the way. We took the train back to Paris and decided to find the Eiffel Tower. When in Paris... right?

Well, we didn't have a very good map of Paris. If you ever go to Paris, get a good map! Finding the Eiffel Tower wasn't very hard because you can see it from just about anywhere. We just hopped off the metro at the station it was supposed to be closest to and made our way its direction. We stopped by a baguette shop along the way because I was hungry. We found the tower and had a nice look at and took some pictures. We didn't go up. Neither of us really cared about going up. Besides, the elevator was super expensive, and you even had to pay to hike up all those stairs (which I was in no shape to do at 6 months pregnant). The Eiffel Tower was nice. About what both of us expected. We sat on a bench to eat some cookies and drink some juice before we set off to find the next thing.

We were looking for the Pantheon. Well, first we were looking for the metro stop. We got lost and ended up walking a lot further than we needed to, but with the help of bus stop maps, we found one eventually. So, we got off the metro at the Pantheon stop. Then we got lost again and ended up on a bridge overlooking a river and Notre Dame. So we decided to go there instead. The architecture was pretty cool and inside they were setting up for a free orchestra concert. I wish we could have stayed for it, but we wouldn't have been able to stay for the whole thing and make it back to the train station in time to catch our train to Marseille. Instead we walked to the Pantheon.

We did eventually find it this time, but it started raining. Hard. By the time we got there we were completely drenched and I don't think it was open anyway. So, we stood outside and laughed at how ridiculous this whole day had been. I had been feeling pretty tired and wet and a little crabby earlier, but something about running through a downpour in Paris with only a vague idea of where you actually are is really fun. We took a picture or two and decided it was time to just find our way back to the train station.

We found a panini shop that wasn't closed quite yet and then found a seat to wait for our train back home to Marseille. We were wet, exhausted, our feet hurt, and I think we spent half the day lost, but we had a lot of fun. Our train pulled into Marseille around 11:30 pm, we made our way back to our apartment, and we fell asleep almost instantly.