Ugh, I hate that I'm sick while in France. I had what has become my usual breakfast at the hostel: very hard bread, butter, jelly, and cereal with warm milk. I was so looking forward to croissants, but instead they had what I believe to be 10 year old bread. No joke, after eating 2 pieces of it, my teeth hurt from having to work so hard to chew it. Oh and they don't refrigerate milk!! WHAT?! I still can't get over this. Eating cereal with warm milk just doesn't make it seem like cereal.
Today we went to Versailles and saw the castle of King Louis XIV. We got there early, so we had some time to walk around the area. It was very much like Chartres to me. There was a huge farmer's market/art market going on. It was a quiet, quaint, adorable little area.
Versailles was quite crowded. We each had an audioguide. After the first 20 minutes of being in the castle, I didn't see a FU-BEST student again until I finished the tour. It is such a large castle!! And so lush! It was quite amazing. So much gold!! So many paintings, that I probably should have known - but I'm art ignorant.
In the rooms, they had these exhibitions from Takashi Murakami, an artist that is very popular in Japan. His exhibits, statues mostly, were interesting, but I thought they cheapened the effect of an amazing castle. I thought they looked tacky in an extravagant room from over 325 years ago. I'll let you see what you think though. The whole tour took me a few hours. Afterwards you could tour the gardens. "The gardens" span 977 acres!! After walking around in there for about 3 hours, my legs were so exhausted! The gardens were quite beautiful. I walked to a part that had Marie Antionette's apartments. Though, my favorite part was the canal. It was open to the public, and since it was a nice day there were tons of people laying in the sun reading or picnicking. Also there was a rowing team and tons of little row boats that people rented. It was a gorgeous view to sit by the water and enjoy my Formaggio (cheese) sandwich while looking at the gardens and the castle. Note: I have eaten so much bread! Even more than Berlin, surprising I know. Sadly, bread is the only thing reasonably priced.
That night we decided to do a repeat of last night's picnic, expect with all 7 of us. We had bread, several kinds of cheese, apples, Haribo, and wine again. We decided to have our picnic at Sacre Coeur Basilica. When we got to the area, there were all these Africans with bracelets. They would tie it on your wrist and not let you go until you paid them 10€. Luckily Malia told us about this ahead of time, so I kept my hands busy carrying things. These people were quite pushy. You really had to be mean to get away. When we finally got to the base of Sacre Coeur, we stared up at flight after flight of stairs. There were sooo many! You could pay to take the elevator, but being college students we walked. It was quite a long, tedious walk to the top, filled with a couple of stops for huffing and puffing. When we got to the top, there were 2 idiots attempting to ride down the stairs on bikes! Craziness!
It was definitely worth the climb (for some reason Miley Cyrus song comes to mind here - even though I don't like that song). It was gorgeous!! Definitely tops my list of amazing sights! Sacre Coeur is a church, but it is on a giant hill, thus the steps. It overlooks the Paris skyline. When we got there it was dark already. I can't even describe how beautiful it was. I wish my camera could have captured exactly what I was seeing.
It was another fun night, having our picnic overlooking Paris. The walk home was even better since the trains had stopped running for the night. Especially since none of us, except Chris, were in a condition to map out a route back to the hostel. Without Chris, we probably would have wandered for hours.
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