Versailles Palace

Before we left Paris, we spent the morning at the Palace of Versailles. It's about an hour train ride from the city, but well worth it.

We had a general idea of where we needed to walk from the train station to get the to palace. We got to the corner that we needed to turn at and couldn't remember which way we needed to turn. As we looked around, this is what we saw. We figured it was the place.

Inside the main gate.
The Chapel room. This was one of my favorite rooms.
There was a statue of L'Hopital. Gavin was pretty excited. He created some math law, something to do with triangles? Gavin tried to explain it to me.

The second floor of the Chapel Room, where the king would attend church.

I wish we could have gone in to get a better look at it.

There was this really weird Asian pop art exhibit going on there. It was actually really annoying because there were weird art pieces in the middle of these beautiful rooms.

Each room had beautiful paintings on the ceiling.

The Hall of Mirrors, which is one of the most famous rooms at Versailles. Louis XIV at Le Brun to depict himself in different poses on the ceiling of the room. It was built in 1978 after the Treaty of Nijmegen was signed.

The Queen's Room.

The ceiling of the Queen's room.

The Crusade Rooms, which has pictures of the most famous battles of France.There were a couple hallways with statues. One of them had statues of French kings.

The back side of the palace.
Looking out over the garden. These were huge. According to the map, it would take about 60 minutes to walk from the back of the palace to the end of the garden.
The back of the palace.


There were statues all along the garden.


Gavin was laughing at me because with my sun glasses on, the leaves looked a lot more colorful and whenever I would take them off, I would be disappointed at how they actually looked. We tried to take a picture with my glasses covering the lens. This is what it looked like normally.
This is with my glasses.
The Petite Trianon
This was a buggy used for one of her kids.
The Salon.
The dining room.

Some of the original china.
We were told by a friend that the gardens by Marie Antoinette's estate were prettier than the Versailles Gardens, which they were.

One of the cottages in the Marie Antoinette's Estates.





The Temple of Love.


The Grand Trianon. This was built at the request of Louis XIV as a retreat for him and his mistresses.
One of salons.


Louis XIV's bedroom.
The back of the Grand Trianon.
The main gate of Versailles.

We really enjoyed Versailles. It was such a nice was to end our time in Paris. Everything was so opulant and grand. It was very incredible to see.

Notre Dame Bells

This is a short video of the Notre Dame Bells. The bells went on for at least ten minutes. Hearing bells like this all of the time is something that I'm really going to miss when we come home.

Sorry it's so shaky. I don't have the steadiest hand. :)

Notre Dame and Louvre

We visited Notre Dame and the Lourve at night the last night we were there. Notre Dame was very impressive inside.

I didn't get a lot of pictures because I realised that a service was going on at the moment, plus I don't think you could take pictures...



Model of Notre Dame.

I love all of the candles in the Cathedrals.

One of the gargoyles outside.

We also loved all of the details outside.

The River Seine

We loved the Louvre at night. It was so pretty.

I wanted a picture, too. :)

Basilique du Sacre-Coeur

We visited the Basilique du Sacre-Coeur, or the Basilica of the Sacred Heart. It's located on a hill that's the highest point in the city. It was quite the walk to get up there. :)

There was a harpist playing there. He sounded really nice.

It has a great view of the city.


The dome inside.

We went up in the dome, but the crypte was closed that day. The tickets are bought from an automated machine and five people in front of us couldn't get their cash to go in and gave up. I, however, was able to get ours in. People cheered for us.
Part of the way up included walking along the roof top.





The stairs going down.

One of the gargoyles.
Looking up from the ground.
It's right in the neighborhood of Montmartre, which is an artisits neighborhood. There were a ton of artists selling their paintings or offering to sketch you. Not a character sketch, but a nice, real life sketch.
We ate lunch in a cafe there.
That pink restuarant was near by and Gavin got the best crepe he has ever had there. He is still raving about it.
Since we were nearby, we walked over to the Moulin Rouge. It looked a lot different than we thought it would. I guess I was expecting something more like in the movie. It was in a pretty seedy neighborhood with sex shops and strip clubs everywhere. We left pretty quickly.

The Assemblee Nationale

This is the Armory Museum. We didn't get there in time to tour it, but we were able to walk around the grounds for a bit. Napoleon's tomb is in there, I believe.



We also wanted to see the Rodin Museum, but didn't make it to that in time. We mostly wanted to see The Thinker. While we were walking on the sidewalk next to it, we look over and could see The Thinker's butt in the garden of the museum.

Paris was a wonderful city and we had such a great time there. I really didn't want to leave. There really is something magial about there. This was our first time in a place that spoke a different language that neither of us understood. We were able to get by with a couple of phrases alright. I hope we are able to visit again soon!