Tuesday: Museums & Dinner
What do you do if you have been to Paris before? (3rd visit actually ). Try and do some of the other thousands of attractions there are available!
We started the day at the Catacombs. Arrived at 9:30 and entered at 11:30, apparently this is normal waiting time, they only let 200 people in at a time. 2 hours in a queue could make one go stir crazy but we were very lucky, right behind us in the queue were a couple from Williamstown, Linda and Scott. They were at the end of their holiday and were leaving for Melbourne the next day. We chatted about each others travels and the time in the queue flew and we went through the Catacombs with them...we really enjoyed the time spent with them and the Catacombs (Linda and Scott I hope we didn't bore you too much!)
The Catacombs were amazing. In the late 1700s some genius came up with the idea of removing the cemetries of Paris to free up land for buildings and put all the remains in an old quarry ( limestone...Notre Dame was built from the limestone of this quarry).
Then an entrepreneur (probably a greater genius) in the early 1800s started doing guided tours of the Catacombs! The arrangements of the remains is truly incredible.
Next stop was the Rodin Museum. Here we wandered the grounds and saw lots of statues by Rodin, but the 2 stand-outs were The Thinker and The Gates of Hell. The original Thinker is a part of The Gates of Hell statue, I think we are up to 6 on The Thinker count! Apparently the piece at the National Gallery in Melbourne is one of the original 28 that Rodin did in bronze! The other major work (in marble) we saw was Rodin's The Kiss (see photos).
After a late lunch, we headed to the Picasso Museum. Here there was a collection of his works, in chronological order of his career and also works of his and other great artists from his personal collection (this included Matisse, Gauguin, Braque and many others). For me the highlights were The Weeping Woman, the Dora Maars and his obsession with bulls.
A quick break back at the apartment and out for dinner. After doing a walk around for something we ended up 30m from are apartment, next door to the Bistro from our first night.
Initially we sparked a conversation with a Turkish academic from Istanbul, who Kristin managed to "bot" a cigarette from. On the other side were 2 Parisians, who were also very friendly. After the Turk left, 4 men sat down (2 Americans from Virginia and 2 Poms..one was actually Welsh though!). They were in Paris for the annual Air Show...they were high flyers in more than one sense! One of the Americans owned a some aeronautical company that flogged??? and the conversations indicated that they were well connected, so much so, I think the Governor of Virginia is a very close friend/business colleague of these gentlemen. We had a good couple of hours chatting and drinking with them. They gave us a bottle of red that was presented to them all related to Virginia and 1813, that they couldn't take home with them to the U.S. ( they were leaving the next day). A really enjoyable meal and evening.
Wednesday: Versailles
One of the Big Ticket items that we hadn't done previously was Versailles. Today was the day! You need a whole day there and having visit the lovely town of Versailles(about 25 km SE of Paris) it could easily be a 2 day visit (with a stay overnight). We caught the train and took about an hour to get there from our apartment.
*** Blogger is not playing nicely with my phone and I can't post any photos currently..those that are on facebook can see some***
The visit was in 3 parts. Initially we did the Palace and the Royal Apartments. The highlight being the Hall of Mirrors. Maybe we have seen too many palaces and ornate churches in past 5 weeks but we were slightly underwhelmed, I think the Summer Palace in St. Petersburg was more impressive.
The second part were the gardens of Versailles. ..they were magnificent, certainly not to be missed if you visit Paris. We actually walked into the town(& of course visited the local church...Notre Dame) and bought a variety of foods and drinks and returned to the gardens to have lunch. You could spend hours in the gardens (which cover close to 30 square kilometres).
In the gardens, the third part of Versailles is the Marie Antoinette Estate, which contained a couple of palaces and some more beautiful gardens.
An eventful trip home in the peak hour rush, for a short period of time, turned us into sardines.
A quick dinner and early night (11 pm!)
Cheers,
A & K.
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