A sunny day to tour the palace of the Sun King

We finally had a nice day in Paris, and what a nice day!

We got out later than we'd like as usual, but it didn't matter. The sun was shining, the weather was warm, and Paris was packed. We hoofed it to the Metro station where we mapped out our way to Versailles, with only one minor hump as our Metro tickets stopped working when we had to transfer to the RER train the rest of the way to the chateau. That sorted, we eventually found ourselves in Versailles station, and soon we were at the palace gates.

Holy elaborate, Batman! For 10 Euro, we got a ticket to the palace, the grounds, and a free audio guide. The palace tour was impressive, though positively packed with obnoxious tourists of all ages who (despite being told) refused to turn off the flashes on their cameras. Nevertheless, the experience was magnificent. The rooms were all fantastically ornate, especially the Hall of Mirrors. It was everything that it had been chalked up to be in the history books. Then we left the rather short palace tour and headed to the grounds to stroll through the acres and acres of perfectly manicured formal gardens. That on its own would nearly be worth the price of admission. You could live in the palace grounds and never get caught without very much effort, they're that big, and that dense.

Tired and hungry, we headed back to Paris to hunt down food. We wound up going (yet again) to a grocery store for food, and made a nice picnic dinner for ourselves that we ate near the Eiffel Tower as the sun set. The Eiffel Tower is nice during the day, but it's absolutely stunning at night. Seeing the sun set behind it, then seeing the lights come on inside the superstructure was great. Once it was dark enough, the tower began to sparkle with hundreds of little lights positioned all over it. That only lasts for a few minutes each hour, but it's a fantastic few minutes.


The only thing wrong with it was the vendors. There are shady trinket vendors everywhere near the tower hawking rings of crappy metal tower replicas, illuminated plastic towers, and other similar junk. Then once the sun went down we were accosted every two minutes by similar folks attempting to sell wine and champagne for "good price!" It got tiring after a while to stop shooing them away. The police are apparently wise to their game though, because as we were leaving we noticed a duo of police with bags full of the vendors' trinkets heading to their car, which they had doubtlessly confiscated because they were operating without a vendors' license or something. I was only slightly disappointed that we saw no gypsies the whole time, as I was hoping to covertly snap a photo of them for you, my dear readers, to illustrate how they look exactly like stereotypical gypsies, in bright clothing, gold, and so forth.

Today we're back in the city, going to explore the Champs Elisee, Arc de Triomphe, the Louvre, and more! Adieu!