From South Africa, we were headed to Shanghai, China to connect with another friend. Josh’s friend Dawson from high school, whom I have not met yet. He’s been living in China for over a year now. He had been teaching ESL, but now he’s working in a business job for a hospital in Shanghai.
Before we get to China though, we have to connect through Paris. We stayed one more day in Paris. This one was planned though, so it wasn’t as stressful. We planned on going to Versailles, as it is one of the few attractions that we hadn’t seen yet.
We took the train (subway) to get to Versailles. It was bloody expensive, and then the train workers were on strike that day! It was the biggest mess. We didn’t know what train to take because they were running only a few trains and they were on different tracks than their normal routes. We finally got the right train and made it to Versailles.
It was not too bad of a price to get in, except that if you wanted to see all of Versailles: the palace, the grounds, Marie Antoinette’s house, and there might have been one more area — you had to pay 10-20 Euros each place. We just visited the palace. I would have liked to see the grounds, but it was a cold, rainy day, and wouldn’t have been pleasant at all.
This was a very extravagant palace. I haven’t been to very many palaces in my life, but this one would be hard to beat. Everything was gold, or covered in gold, or with gold accents. The walls were covered with beautiful tapestry wallpaper, not paper, but cloth. It was very beautiful.
There was a very nice chapel area, which you could look into but not enter. There were beautiful ceiling frescos, and famous artworks, and statues of famous French nobles. There were a lot of paintings of the royal family.
The grounds through the window looked amazing. A lot of the grounds are still forest, as it was used for hunting.
After seeing Versailles we headed back to the airport. Again, the trains were a pain in the butt. After seeing Versailles, I honestly don’t have anywhere else in Paris I care about going to. I think it’s an outrageously expensive city to visit, and I don’t really want to go back again. Why should it be the tourist capital of the world? I would much rather go back to Italy and explore more of Florence and Rome before ever going back to Paris. In Paris, every place is almost a disappointment. Especially for the money it all costs. I recommend the Louvre, but don’t get your hopes up about the Mona Lisa… you won’t get to see her very well anyway in the crowd of 400 people and she’s very small. If you want to see Europe, skip Paris and visit somewhere nice instead.