Versailles, palace of spoiled French monarchs

We started today with a trip to Versailles (which was a bit difficult to get to, particularly if you include getting on the wrong train for a few stops), and we got to the little town outside of Paris by lunchtime. After some crepes at a tourist trap, we headed into the area of the château itself.


There was a long line for tickets. A very long line. An hour and a half long, to be precise. In the sun. But, that was that. Had we realized this in advance, there were some alternatives I'd recommend to future travelers (french museum pass or paying extra for the guided tour). Anyway, we continued onto the gardens, which were amazing.


There were pathways hidden among the trees, canals, flowers. It was a shame the fountains weren't turned on. People rented bicycles, golf carts, segways, and rowboats to get around. We walked. Since the gardens themselves are free, any Parisian looking to relax on the weekend should head out there for a picnic; bring wine, bread, and sunscreen. Anyway, we had some ice cream and enjoyed the outdoors before heading off to the old house of Marie Antoinette (before they beheaded her).


She had her own private estate near Versailles, where she liked to think and whatnot. I have a feeling she never really appreciated what kind of luxury she was living in. She had a private theatre (in a separate building!) where she and her friends could see a play, she had a private garden with fake rocks, ponds, and gazebos, and she had more well-groomed trees than you can shake a fist at.


Anyway, after that we saw the other non-château estate, which may have been for more official functions, I'm not sure which was used for what. It's the Grand Trianon, whereas Marie's place was the Petit Trianon. It had a lot of nice rooms, and it's own set of lovely gardens. One thing I've noticed is that they must have all been short, judging by the beds.


We took a mini train back to the main château, though it took as long as walking and was, for me, far less comfortable. Trains simply were not meant for uneven cobblestone surfaces.

Anyway, back at the real palace at Versailles, we got a look at Louis XIV's chapel, his bedroom, and, of course, at the hall of mirrors:


It was an overall very impressive estate, with more pomp and circumstance than anyone ever needs. Louis couldn't have any corner undecorated, from the fireplaces, to the candelabras, to the ceilings.


I also liked the use of wall paper, gilding, and sculpture to emphasize the importance of gratuitous opulence.


He also liked marble:


On our way out, I noticed the railings had little emblems on them, particularly sun emblems. (He was known as the "sun king", after all.) I thought that was a nice touch.


We took the train back to Paris and had a simple dinner. Despite how tired we were, I wanted to go to the top of the Eiffel tower before leaving the city. There was a long line, despite the late hour (oh, this was a day of waiting in lines!), and it had gone from hot to cold as the sun was setting, but we made it up to watch the sun set from the second level, and to see the city lights in the twilight from the top.


Afterwards, we walked back to the hotel exhausted from our full day of walking and waiting in lines. Tomorrow we head to London for our last day in Europe. The only thing we have planned is a spa appointment at the Mandarin Oriental London, which is a nice way to end our European vacation.

The Louvre (large Mona Lisa storage device)

Going to Paris for the first time without seeing the Louvre at least once would probably be some form of cardinal sin (see yesterday's post for more interesting sinning you can do in Paris). To get it out of the way, we were just going to hop in, see Mona Lisa, and pop out for some tea, but then we got distracted by some art. Okay, I'm being all tongue-in-cheek here; we really did want to see all the other art here, but we did start with our favorite Da Vinci diva. Unfortunately, so did everyone else:


We didn't get a great look at it, but there are plenty of much better shots of it online. Afterwards, we wandered off to the sculpture parts of the Louvre, particularly the greek and roman sculpture. I particularly enjoy seeing emperor Hadrian looking at a bust of himself:


We also saw Da Vinci's famous Venus de Milo, which wasn't in the best of shape, all things considered.


There was even a bit more of the Parthenon here, though as you might remember from before, most of it is at the British Museum. (I'm sure there are some pillars in Greece, too.) After the Roman/Greek sculpture, we wandered into the basement where they had some parts of the original, medeival building that was there originally.


It was pretty cool that most of the structure is there. The original structure in that location dates from the 12th century, as a fort built by the French king of the time. The building above ground that's there now was mostly built in the 16th and 17th centuries and was the seat of government until Louis XIV moved to Versailles. It was still technically a royal palace until the revolution. I've noticed this about a number of museums, gardens, etc here; they were owned by the royalty right up until the revolution. Ah, the joys of beheading all your royalty. Anyway, because it used to be the royal palace, it contained the apartments of Napolean III:


After a lengthy tour and seeing a bunch of French royal opulence, we headed down to the Egyptian and Mesopotamian part of the building, which had some cool sculptures, Sphynxes, and many things with hieroglyphics and other ancient forms of writing. Particularly, they had the original code of Hammurabi:


"An eye for an eye" and all that. I'm impressed at how many things are just sitting out in the open, in the warm, humid air. The Mona Lisa was well protected, of course. Anyway, that was pretty much the high-level version of our tour.

We left and had ramen for lunch. Yep, we went to a ramen-ya in Paris, when that's something we could do any day of the week back home. But, it's comfort food for us. Not to mention it was interesting seeing a nearly identical ramen shop in Paris to the ones we're used to. They spoke Japanese, Chinese, French, and a bit of English. I think more people should be such polyglots. This led into an expensive shopping foray, since we're in Paris.


We hit up the big names: Prada, Gucci, Dolce and Gabbana, and others. Yeah, these are all Italian designers, though we did go to Comme des Garcons and Hermes, and looked in the windows of Givenchy and miu miu. It was a busy shopping day.

At the end of the day, we wanted to go to L'Atelier du Joel Robuchon, but I botched the reservation (accidentally called his other restaurant, the "Table", instead). After an unpleasant conversation with the maitre d, we went off to the Marais to find something else. With some great luck, we stumbled on a delicious southern French place:


For a hidden gem near Bastille, it was just fantastic. The waiter (there was only one) was very warm and friendly, and spoke great English. My favorite dish was grilled asparagus with prosciutto and shaved parmesan served warm over a bed of cold greens with a balsamic reduction. Or, as they called it, "grilled asparagus with parmesan" (except in French).

We got too caught up with other things to visit the Eiffel tower (even though it's open until midnight!), so we'll do that tomorrow before leaving.

Paris!

We arrived in Paris yesterday afternoon after a short train trip from Brussels. It was nice and sunny, and our hotel, Hotel Sezz, was a short trip from the train station. It's in a good location, in the 16th arrondisement, across the bridge from the Eiffel Tower. The decor is very sleek and modern--in fact, when we were shown to our room, our first thought was "where's the bathroom?" All the doors were closed when we arrived and it really looked like they were all for a big closet, but the woman opened the door to the bathroom and we were immediately relieved. Here's a picture of our room, with the door to the bathroom open (the leftmost one), all the doors on the wall look like the ones that are shut.


We also have a small balcony with a view of the Seine:


It's a really nice room, and we're happy with the location of the hotel. After we settled in for a bit, we made our way to the Arc du Triomphe. Our first view of it was this:


We found the staircase that took us under the street to the Arc, but as we were walking, we noticed a huge line of people, so we walked up to the end thinking that it was the line to get out. As I waited in line, Nick walked up to the front to see what it was that we were in line for, and it turns out that it was the line to buy tickets to go to the top of the Arc du Triomphe. We got closer to the ticket booth and noticed this pictures of things not to do:


Do they get a lot of visitors in bathing suits? Next to the booth was another warning saying that the climb to the top involved climbing up 284 stairs...and also descending 284 stairs. The stairs weren't that bad, but the staircase was a tight spiral staircase, which made it very claustrophobic and it sort of got me dizzy constantly moving to the right:


But the climb to the top was worth it for the view: Since it was a nice sunny day, we could see for miles:


We could see many of the landmarks from the Arc, such as the Eiffel Tower, Sacre Coeur, and Notre Dame. Afterwards, we walked around the base of the arc and saw the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.


I don't know how many of there there are in the world, but we also saw one buried in Westminster Abbey. We then walked down the Champs Elysees and saw Louis Vuitton's flagship store in Paris:


It's huge, spanning at least three floors above ground. The mens section is huge and so I spent some time looking at the clothes, and according to Nick, as I started to look as if I was seriously interested in purchasing something, one of the saleswoman took a quick glance at my clothing (which was 50% Prada at the time) and decided that I was worth helping. So as I took a pair of shorts off the rack, she immediately asked me if I needed help and if I needed the shorts in my size. She came out to apologize that they were out of my size, but brought me another style of shorts, so I tried on a few. According to Nick, she stood outside the door as I was trying all of them on. I purchased one (as it turns out, it was the cheapest one), and as we were waiting for our shorts to be bagged up and brought out to us, she offered us drinks, which was great because we were really thirsty. Anyway, we were impressed with the service and it has serioiusly changed my mind about Louis Vuitton.

We continued down the Champs Elysees and walked through a park and ended up at Place de la Concorde. From there, we walked across the bridge and found ourselves at L'Hotel des Invalides, which used to be a hospital for injured soldiers. Since it was Bastille Day, there was some sort of military celebration there, so we walked down the street and saw parked helicopters on the lawn.


From there, we walked to the Parc du Champ de Mars, which is where the Eiffel Tower is located. A huge crowd was already assembled at 7:00 on the park grounds for the fireworks show, which was scheduled for 11:00. We continued walking and finally made it to our hotel for a quick rest. After asking the concierge for a dinner recommendation, we made our way to Le Tournesol, a French restaurant two blocks away. We ate outside starting at 8:00, and finished at 10:30...apparently, the French spend a lot of time at dinner. But we were in a mild hurry so that we could see the fireworks. We meant to go to the hotel to grab a jacket before the fireworks show started, but as we started to walk, the Eiffel Tower went dark, music started, and fireworks were being blasted. We made our way through the crowd to find a decent viewing spot and saw a decent amount of fireworks. And then the Eiffel Tower started to sparkle:


It was an impressive fireworks show lasting over 15 minutes, and was probably much better than what we would have seen on the 4th in LA. Afterwards, we called it a night.

This morning, we woke up at 11:15. We've noticed that many of our hotel rooms don't have clocks in them, and the curtains are quite effective in blocking out the sun, so it remains dark in our room. We made our way to the Louvre. As we exited the subway, we noticed that we were in a shopping mall. Nick didn't remember the mall existing when he was here last time, but it was quite nice because we needed breakfast and had a quick pastry and coffee. As we walked to the entrance to the Louvre, we saw this:


And then we noticed that the entrance to the Louvre was blocked off, so we made our way outside and discovered that the Louvre is closed on Tuesdays. That sucked, but Nick, decided to take some photos of the outside of the Louvre since we were already there.

Since we were planning on spending our day at the Louvre today, we didn't have any other plans, so we quickly had to decide on where to go next. Nick said that Notre Dame was close, so off we went. It took a while to find it from the subway station though. There weren't any signs and the maps weren't helpful. However, we were able to see one of the two belltowers which guided us towards it.


It was built in the 13th century, and is very well preserved. The stained glass windows were very impressive, with the windows in the four cardinal directions laid out in the famous "rose" pattern. Many of the stained glass panels tell a story, but we were so far away from them, that it was too difficult to make them out. There was also a chandelier on display:


As we left, the children's choir began to sing, so we stopped to take a moment to listen to them. Very beautiful, angelic voices. Next, Sacre Coeur.

[Nick talking now.]

We took the subway over to the closest possible stop. I had heard there was a funicular from the bottom, but we didn't see it and decided that it couldn't be too many steps to the top.


Okay, it was something like 85 degrees in the hot sun; we were hassled by panhandlers, and we had no water. Somehow we had a fun time climbing up the hill nonetheless. We found our way into the church, but unfortunately no pictures allowed. Also, they asked for silence, and to make the point, a guy kept banging on the wooden railing and demanding "Silence!" (in French, that is). The thing is, to my ears he was the only one making any noise. Oh well. It was a pretty church, but Notre Dame is more impressive. The best thing, after all those steps, was the view!


Afterwards, we were a bit hungry, so we wandered the streets of Montmatre and found a boulangerie on the street. I had a Croque Monsieur and Jerry had the Quiche du Jour. I love that this is the sort of food you can get at a street cafe here. By the way, did I mention we've had every meal in Belgium and Paris on the street, outside? I like it.

We walked through a big cemetary that's supposed to have lots of famous people buried in it. Impressive looking mausoleums. We found ourselves in the Bohemian part of town, where the Moulin Rouge is:


Mostly it's full of strip clubs and sex top shops. Also, relevant to the area, is a museum:


Seven floors of erotic carved objects, big statues, and artwork. (Open until 2am!) It ranged from south america to France; Africa to southeast asian; ancient Greek to modern Japanese fetishes (of which there were a couple floors). There was a silent movie porn from the 20's on a loop (the dialog, when there was any, was written on the screen, just like all other silent movies!). It was interesting, and full of young couples. Though, the grand majority of the stuff in there was from the last couple centuries. Which is sad, since there was lots of porn on greek ceramics back a couple millenia, and they had all of 2 bowls. I guess that stuff is hard for a low-end museum to come by.

We tried to go shopping, but at this point it was getting late and the stores were starting to close. We finally went off to get some dinner in the Jardin du Palais Royale:


It used to be the garden for the nearby Royal Palace (by the Louvre), but I guess after the people chopped some heads off and reclaimed all the royal stuff, they made it public. What's nice is that it's surrounded by a building (made it hard to find), so there's very little traffic noise. It's mostly full of playing children, joggers, and couples eating outside at the many restaurants. We had a fantastic meal, and Jerry ate a large mound of beef tartare.. which their English language menu translated as simply "raw ground beef". It was much more appetizing in person, however.

Tomorrow: back to the Louvre, and we plan on climbing Le Tour Eiffel!

Big day in Brussels

Sorry for the late post on Brussels!

We discovered there's quite a bit of a hill in Brussels, as we walked up and down it a couple times. The big discovery of the day was the land of chocolatiers, known as the Place du Grand Sablon. As you can imagine, Jerry was quite happy to find this:


Jerry definitely enjoyed shopping at a number of chocolate stores, I think five in total. And we quite enjoy eating it all ourselves. Just kidding! We'll bring some back for everyone (we hope it survives the flight).

We also discovered Brussels to be the land of weird museums. There's a sewer museum, a lamppost museum, an american civil war museum (known as the confederate museum...), and the ones we went to, the Brewery Museum and the Chocolate Museum.

The Brewery Museum was pretty lame; for 5 euros, we saw the room they had. It had a video of how beer is made, how much people like beer, and how to cook with beer. Yeah, kind of a cooking show. Anyway, the room also had old brewing equipment with some signs as to what it's for. Lame. At the end, however, they did give us each a beer. So, I drank both of them. Not bad, but not great for Belgian beer.


The Musee du Cacao et Chocolat was much better. It had three floors all about cacao, from when it was discovered (and where) up to manufacturing and modern concerns such as environmentalism. Everything was in four languages (everything is at least bilingual, and often trilingual -- french, dutch, and english -- in Belgium). Also, they made some shells for pralines, but then we just ate the shells. I guess the chocolatier did not have time to fill them.

The other museum we went to was the Musical Instruments Museum. It had a wide variety of instruments, and particularly a wide variety of accordians. It didn't have too many truly antique instruments, but the neat part was the headphones. They give you a set of headphones to wear around the building, and in front of each case of instruments, it plays you a sample of music featuring that type of instrument.

One of the important tourist attractions in Brussels is the Mannequin Pis:


Yeah, it's a boy pissing. There are a number of stories as to what this is all about, but in the end, it's just an important spot in Brussels that a huge group of Chinese tourists were in front of.

We also saw the royal palace:


We couldn't go inside, but the old royal part of town is very pleasant. There's also a beautiful royal park:


We had Italian for dinner. One thing I absolutely love about Brussels is that even the most casual of restaurants has beers like Duvel and Chimay on their menu. Here, Leffe and Stella Artois are the boring/cheap stuff. I'm kind of glad that InBev bought Anheuser Busch; maybe they'll make the beer finally taste decent.

After dinner, we spent some time with old friends from grad school who now live out here.

It was a long day, and at the end Jerry was tired (note that it's still sunny at 10pm here):

(He doesn't know I've added this to the post. Ha ha!)

Tomorrow: Paris!

Brussels!

And we aren't talking about the sprouts that few people like.

This morning we got up early (rough after the Kylie concert!) to catch a plane from Manchester to Brussels on none other but Brussels Airlines (who knew?). They have an interesting theme that plays on the letter 'B'. For example, their lunch boxes say (yes, they gave us a light lunch on a 1 hour flight!): And the drinks say: The barf bag says "b. tidy". As I said, it's an interesting theme. Anyway, they got us safely to Brussels, where we whizzed through customs and immigration. We're staying at a nice hotel, Hotel Bloom!. It's in a businessey area more than a going-out area, but that's fine, since it's quiet. The view isn't particularly exciting, but we're on the 8th floor, so we can see pretty clearly out over other buildings. Much of Brussels is exactly the kind of classic European city I just love, with outdoor cafes open until late, and pedestrians meandering the streets at all hours. There's a chocolate store every ten feet in this city, and you can imagine how Jerry feels about that! Also some beer stores: Anyway, the big thing we did today was to find the Atomium, built originally for the 1958 world's fair, the first world's fair held after the second world war, according to them. (The wikipedia entry disagrees...) It's big. Bigger than you think, at over 330 ft tall (102 meters, they said).


Six of the eight vertices (or "globes") were accessible from the inside. Each one has two floors. Two of them have restaurants, including the top one with the nice view. The connecting pipes are a bit claustrophobic, and I had to duck repeatedly (maybe nobody was tall in the fifties).


Also, as insane as it seemed to us, people were riding down from the top on a zip line.


We also visited the land of miniature Europe, nearby. I think it exists to showcase every member country from the EU. Everything is built to a 1/25 scale. It's the best place to see the Eiffel tower and Big Ben at the same time.


I believe they did a particularly good job of capturing Copenhagen:


(All the miniatures were amazing and, as far as I can tell, highly accurate.) Anyway, despite feeling under the weather, we had a nice first day here. Good night!