Okay, now to cover three days in Paris all in one post! (Except for Versailles) Allons-y!
Our hotel was on Rue Cler, which is a very Parisian-y cobblestone street with a ton of restaurants, right by the Eiffel Tower! On the side streets, all the Christmas lights were still up, which was really pretty to see. We arrived in the evening after checking in, we walked over to see the Eiffel Tower at night. So beautiful! It's all lit up, and it sparkles every hour for five minutes.
Video from the ground:
Video from the second level, looking up (from the third day):
Then we got steak-frites!!! Which is pepper steak with french fries. So amazing.
The next day, we went to Versailles and were exhausted when we came back. After collapsing in our hotel room for a while, we headed over to the Eiffel Tower so we could go up it at night and see all the lights. However, it turned out the very top level was closed for some reason (cold? wind?), so we decided to try again the next night instead, and we headed to the Arc de Triomphe. The Arc de Triomphe is along the Champs Élysées (which you should be singing right now), and it is amazing! There are so many intricate statues and carvings on it, it's incredible, and it's really pretty lit up at night. We climbed to the top and got an awesome view of the Champs Élysées and the surrounding streets all lit up. You can even see the Eiffel Tower in the distance!
Champs Élysées from the top of the Arc de Triomphe
The Eiffel Tower from the top of the Arc de Triomphe
Les Invalides
The next morning, we got up early and walked to the Musée d'Orsay. The walk ended up being way longer than I thought, but it was really pretty, and the sky was still pink and orange from sunrise. We walked by Les Invalides, which is a beautiful complex of buildings from the 1670's, that house several museums and a military hospital. The gold dome looked amazing in the morning lighting!
A little backstory: the Musée d'Orsay is probably the second most prestigious museum in Paris/the world after the Louvre, and it was closed for a special event when my dad and I tried to go three years ago. Ever since then, it's been my dad's dream to finally set foot inside. And we did! Yay!!!!! He was so excited that the first thing he did inside was start taking pictures in front of a "No Photos" sign.
So I didn't get any pictures in side the Musée d'Orsay, but it was really incredible. It's inside of an old train station with a glass ceiling. On the top floor, there's a giant clock on the outside, and behind it is glass, so you can look out through the clock, which is super cool. We saw so many famous paintings, it was crazy! Rodin, Renoir, Manet, Vincent van Gogh, Degas. Woops, sorry, name-dropping 19th century artists is a common side-effect of visiting a lot of European museums.
Sacré-Coeur
Next, we headed to Montmartre, which is a neighborhood up on a hillside that overlooks the rest of Paris and includes the Basilique du Sacré-Coeur. The hike to get up there was quite intense! I remember there was a sign in the metro station saying it was the deepest in the city, and there were no escalators! Call me a lazy American, but I like a good escalators. And we finally reached street level, only to find out we still had a ways to go.
The neighborhood was very cool and kind of like the stereotype of Paris. It's probably played up for the tourists. There were little shops and cafés and street performers everywhere, and even a little art fair. And the view is amazing! It feels like you can see all of Paris!
Nativity scene in a tent...
The Sacré-Coeur was actually finished in 1914, so it's not nearly as old as most of the big churches here, but it's still built in that grand, imposing style, so the architecture makes it look like it's hundreds of years old. It's gleaming white, and all the mosaics and statues are beautiful. But I have to say, I got kind of an iffy vibe from the church. It's beautiful, but you're not allowed to take pictures inside, and there's two big giftshops inside the church, one on each side. They also charged 10 euros (~$13) for a candle. It just all seemed a little commercial. Plus, when we were walking back to the metro, we stopped in this brick church, which had its nativity scene in a tent. So I feel like they could spread the wealth around some more.
View from Montmartre
That night, we finally went up the Eiffel Tower, which was amazing!!! You can see the city all lit up, and the tower is lit up too. There's also a searchlight that rotates at the very top of the tower. It was freezing cold, so we didn't stay on the outside parts of the platforms for very long, but it was still breathtaking. Photos:
You can see where the first two levels are, and the third level is allll the way at the top! The elevator ride is like a minute and a half. If I was scared of heights, I would definitely find it a little unnerving! But it's really cool to look at the structure of the tower as you go through it. Here's the video from coming back down:
Going up the Eiffel Tower at night was an amazing way to end our trip! I'm so glad my dad could come visit me.
The Château de Versailles is pretty much everything you could ever imagine a palace to be. Plus more gold. And more marble. Not many people could pull it off, but Louis XIV totally owned it. The Château de Versailles was built by said King Louis XIV, who moved the French court there in 1682. He wanted to solidify his power by moving his headquarters away from Paris, where there was too much possible unrest. He also used Versailles to keep tabs on nobles and cut them off from gaining too much power by requiring them to spend a certain amount of time at Versailles every year. Woo, European History coming back to me!
Louis XIV wanted an imposing symbol of the power of absolute monarchy, and he got one! The palace is gigantic: 67,000 square meters (that's over 721,000 square feet) with 67 staircases. You can check Wikipedia for a list of more outrageous features. Plus it's on an enormous piece of land, with 800 hectares of gardens (that's almost 2,000 acres). So I'd read about how big Versailles was, but nothing you can imagine comes close to seeing the scale in person.
SO MUCH MARBLE
Audio guides were included with our tickets, which was cool because they give you a good historical background about each room and point out features of the architecture and decoration. It was so cool walking through all the former meeting rooms and bedrooms of French kings. Everything is ridiculously ornate. There is gold everywhere and whole rooms where all the walls are solid marble. My dad kept saying he wished he could take just one little panel to make a nice kitchen counter.
The palace chapel
The Hall of Mirrors! Where the Treaty of Versailles was signed!!
Marie Antoinette's bedroom
Goldgoldgoldgoldgold
The palace as seen from the gardens
This is kind of what my backyard looks like too.
Fountain in the gardens
Grand Trianon
Adding to the ridiculous grandeur of all this, the main palace is not even the only one on the grounds; there's also the Grand Trianon, which is a whole other palace Louis XIV built for his family to get away from the court. You know you have a big estate when it contains your regular house and your vacation house. There's also Petit Trianon, which Louis XV built, and where Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette hung out later. And there's the Hameau de la Reine, which is like a miniature quaint little peasant village that Marie-Antoinette had built so she could play in it. (Apparently making a personal amusement park based on the average French citizen's lifestyle was not her most popular move.) These bonus palaces did not seem that far away on the map, but man were we wrong! I nearly collapsed on the walk back.
Petit Trianon
Hameau de la Reine
But it turns out that long walk back was worth it because we walked out of the gates of Versailles and into a café where I had the best crepes I've ever had in my life ever. If I close my eyes, I can still taste them!!!
Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. OMG. We both got le menu, which was a savory crepe, a dessert crepe, and a glass of cider. I want to hop on a train back to Versailles and get another one just thinking about it!!!
NOMNOMNOMNOMNOMNOMNOMNOMNOMNOMNOMNOM
So that was Versailles! If you ever go to Paris, definitely check out Versailles, and most definitely check out the crepe place on the street to the left when you walk out the gates! À bientôt!
It was... interesting. I was going to pass, but then I thought, how can I live in France for a year without trying an escargot? Anyways, not as gross as I thought it would be, but I can't say I get why people pay so much for them.
My dad LOVES European churches, and the Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Chartres is like the mother of them all. The Holy Grail, if you will. It indeed was the largest and most impressive cathedral I've ever seen!
The cathedral was built during the years 1193 to 1250, which is incredibly fast for this scale. The ceiling is over 120 feet high! The cathedral is really well-preserved, with most of the original stained glass windows and architecture. Right around when it was being built, the cathedral became a major pilgrimage destination because it has the Sancta Camisa, which is the veil Mary supposedly wore while giving birth to Jesus. After reading this in the guide, I was pretty interested in seeing this veil, but unfortunately they were doing restoration work on the area of the cathedral where it's usually on display, so it had been "mise en sécurité." What! I was pretty surprised they would put the cathedral's claim to fame into storage and not just move the display case. Oh well... The cathedral was amazing nonetheless!
I took a video because the cathedral was so big, I couldn't fit it into one photo.
Statues outside the doors
Amazing stained glass!!!
The shiny white part where they're doing restoration work.
We also climbed up one of the towers and got an incredible view of the city of Chartres and the architecture up on the roof. So. Many. Stairs. I think I had to sit down at one point. Maybe two points. Somehow, I managed to take a few pictures despite being doubled over gasping for air.
À bientôt!
P.S. It was so warm today, I wore a t-shirt!!!!!!!!
Okay, now to cover three days in Paris all in one post! (Except for Versailles) Allons-y!
A little backstory: the Musée d'Orsay is probably the second most prestigious museum in Paris/the world after the Louvre, and it was closed for a special event when my dad and I tried to go three years ago. Ever since then, it's been my dad's dream to finally set foot inside. And we did! Yay!!!!! He was so excited that the first thing he did inside was start taking pictures in front of a "No Photos" sign.
