Day 8: Versailles and Paris

What I learned today:

1. Street vendors don’t take no for an answer.

2. I still hate bees! Especially big black furry ones!

3. Police sirens sound different here.

4. Sometimes it’s best to not look up and just take things a step at a time.

5. The metro smells.

6. There are lines for everything!

7. Naps are good!!

More Words:

Pont = Point
Musee = Museum
nord = north
est = east
eau = water

Today was our last official day in France. Tomorrow we will be transferring to the Netherlands via a High Speed train. As such the first order of business this morning was to travel to Versailles and see the Palace there. We were supposed to have one double decker bus to house both schools. Instead, only one regular coach showed up. So that was a nice cozy fit! But we managed and we got there in one piece.
The only problem is that the workers that man the interior of the Palace happened to go on strike this morning. This is strange to us as Americans, because although we do have strikes we don’t usually have them on a whim. I guess there really was no warning that the workers would decide they did not want to work this morning, so there was no way for us to be notified ahead of time that it wa snot available for tours.
From what our tour guide said, I guess the French strike alot. I am not sure if I have mentioned this before so please forgive me if I have. But in France, the people and the unions have the power. they can literally bring paris to a stand still if they want to by having the Public transportation guys go on strike. That would be the metro workers, the bus drivers, the taxis, etc. They are so well organized that they can on a whim shut it all down, and everyone stops. Rumors have it that the french are hard workers but they hardly work. A coworker who just returned from a year of teaching in France only worked a total of 28 hours a week. Not because she wanted to but because that was all the teachers worked, you could not work more. It seems very strange to me, but it works here and they get what they want. Sometimes I wish the teachers in Clark COunty had that type of power. Maybe it would force the tax payers and governing body to realize that they just can not keep treating us like lower class citizens. But that is a discussion for another day, lets get back to Versailles!
Since we were already at the palace and unable to go inside our tour guides decided to take us around the grounds of the Castle. The grounds around the Palace are actually bigger than the city of Paris, at least the portion that is truly the city of Paris. (Kind of like how the city of Vegas is actually just a small part of the entire valley.) the grounds consist of 18,000 acres of land, the majority of which is landscaped. In the gardens there are 1200 fountains (but they are only turned on twice a day on the weekends during the summer months) and 18 rooms. These rooms were basically enclosed areas that were created with large shrubs as the walls but no roof. Louis the first liked to hold parties and banquets out under the stars. There are a ton of sculptures, including the famous Neptune fountain with his Trident.
the grounds were just magnificent and our guide was well versed in its history. What was kind of fun was that it was the same guide that we had yesterday on our bus tour. His name is Emmanuel, and he really does know quite a bit about the history of Paris. He apologized after the tour because he had kind of done the tour off the top of his head, he was not prepared to do a tour through the gardens, he had been prepared for a tour of the inside of the Palace. We did not notice any problems with what he did.
There are some really cool landscaped areas and some very intricate topiaries. The gardeners were out working in one of the areas we walked to trimming the trees into the different designs. It was pretty cool to see who they pruned the bushes to fit the mold.
Even though we did not get to go inside the palace of Versailles we did learn a little bit about it. The Royal family moved to Versailles from the Louvre Palace in Paris. So it is not shocking that they tried not to downsize their living quarters! Versailles has 2,000 rooms of varying sizes. There were over 15,000 people living in Versailles. So it was basically a small city of its own. The King had two stables that housed thousands of horses in each one, while the queen had her own stable and horses. It took 50 years to complete the Palace of Versailles.
Although we did not get to go inside I bet it is awesome. Just from the outside you can tell it must be grand inside!
After our tour of the Gardens of Versailles we headed back into Paris to the Arc de Triomphe. The EF guides decided that since we could not go into Versailles, we would go to the top of the Arch. Which sounded grand, other than the fact that there was no way up except by foot. And although the sound of a 50 Meter climb with roughly 284 steps sounded daunting, I was determined that I would get to the top and see that 360 degree view of Paris! So I did. I wound my way up that never ending spiral staircase, through a hallway and up 4 more flights of stairs to reach the top. And I must say the view was well worth the trip. You could see for miles and it was fun to try and point out the major land forms you were seeing in the distance. Our entire group except for 3 people went all the way up the Arch. The two other chaperones and one student, did not feel up to the challenge so they stayed behind. I wish they had had a chance to experience it, but I know I couldn’t have carried them on my back so they would have had to do it themselves!
After the small jaunt up the arch it was time for lunch. So our guides dropped us off at popular eating are with the locals. It was full of cafes and there was quite a bit of shopping around. The problem was it was not the “tourist” type of shopping everyone was looking for. We can shop at the gap at home, we wanted to have those familiar tourist shops that all carry the same types of items that depict the location you are from. So we had quite a bit of free time, but had a hard time using it. We did walk around for about an hour and a half or so looking for the “tourist” shop with no luck. Finally deciding it was not going to happen and heading back to the meeting location to relax for awhile. Thankfully it was a park type area so there were ample amounts of space for anyone who wanted to sit on the wall in the sun or lounge in the grassy areas. I chose to listen to my iPod and take in the view of the back of my eyelids! It was very nice.
As this was our last night in Paris we had one more thing to experience. The view from the Eiffel Tower! Guess how many steps it took us to get to the top of that!!! (Not many as we took the elevators up!) There are two elevators you have to take to get to the top of the tower. The first one is a two story incline elevator like the ones inside the Luxor back in Vegas. And if you are claustrophobic, this would not be the ride for you. They pack you in like sardines on the way up. This first elevator stops at the first and 2nd platforms on the tower. But if you want to go all the way to the top, you have to take another elevator from the 2nd floor to the top. There are lines for both, but the line for the smaller elevator that goes form the 2nd to the top floor is quite long. We had about two hours to experience the Eiffel tower and I would say at least 2/3rds of that time was spent in line waiting for something.
But once again the views from the top were magnificent. You can see for miles. And now that we have a pretty good idea of most of the bigger hot spots of Paris it is fun to pick them out of the landscape. I was somewhat afraid that once you got to the top it would be wall to wall people, but it was nice. (Unlike the Washington Monument that once you get up it’s all you can do to move around in the crowd.) You could move around and stop to look out over the landscape whenever you wanted to. Getting down wasn’t as bad, but you still had to wait in line, but the line did move faster so that was good.
We also got to see the “blinkaling” lights again. This was the term our tour guide Emmanuel used when describing the twinkling lights that were added to the Eiffel Tower for the millennium celebrations. Another thing I am not sure I have mentioned is that the Eiffel Tower gets a new paint job every 6 or 7 years. But it is not painted the same color, they actually change the color. This is done on purpose so that they can make sure they recover every part of the tower. Painting it helps protect it from the weather, as it is entirely made of steel, which is not the best thing to have open to the elements. I guess it has been everything from red to green and many color sin between. (They are not bright colors as they tend to lean towards the darker side of the color spectrum with the browns.) But I guess somewhere on the tower is a place where you can see patches of all the different colors they have used.
I also had a fun time running around with one of our students on here quest to find a sweatshirt from Paris. She collects sweatshirts from the different places she goes- similar to how I try to get patches. So I could feel her pain when we were on our last night in Paris and she still did not have a sweatshirt. After a few strikeouts and some last minute hustle we did manage to find one. I have had some luck on my quest for patches, but there are not near enough places that have them as a standard item for people to buy, which I feel is a crime! But maybe someday I will find a place where I can make my own without having to shell out a ton of money for them!
Tomorrow we leave France and head for the Netherlands! So I really need to repack everything and try to get it all back in the suitcase- wish me luck!