Tired Feet!

At Versailles

On Tuesday, I started the morning rough by putting hydrogen peroxide in my eye, ouch!  It was the travel contact solution Mike brought me, supposed to use a special case and I didn't so my eye was all red and extremely painful.  Anyway, we wanted to take advantage of the last day of our Museum Pass so we took the RER (train) out to see Versailles.  This place was HUGE!  King Louis XIV had it built, and he was definitely making a statement.  There were also paintings and statues of him everywhere, he was full of himself.  We spent several hours there and realized that the part you tour is only one little section of the palace.  There are also miles of garden and water features surrounding it.  Inside was filled with lots of art, old furniture, and "artifacts".  There was also a ridiculous art exhibit running through the whole castle, some Japanese artist...it totally ruined the feel, but oh well.  Audio-guides were free so we got to learn along the way while seeing some beautiful things.  It rained the whole time until we went outside :)  For lunch we ate some McDonalds...boring right?  NOPE!  I had my first BigMac, ever, and Mike had beer with his meal.  WEIRD!  We were so tired on the train ride back, but still had lots to see!

Place de la Concorde

We went to Place de la Concorde, where Marie Antoinette (we saw her escape door at the palace) and thousands of other people were guillotined.  There is a huge obelisk from Egypt there and some fountains, but mainly...the traffic was crazy!  There was also the Tuileries Garden, so we walked through that a bit and realized we were right across the river from the Museum d'Orsay, so we went there...which was the beginning of our over/under estimation of distances.  Everything looks really far away on maps, but really close in person, so we walked everywhere that night, and it ended up being a LOT, our feet and legs were dead by the end of this night.  But we were glad we went to that museum.  Van Gogh's famous self-portrait was there, and we also got to see some great Monet, as well as a bunch of pointillism and pastel paintings.  We also went to their exhibition of Gerome, who we had never heard of, but it was amazing!  His paintings were so realistic they looked like photographs, very different than the approach of many other older artists.  *No cameras though :(

The Arc de Triomphe

Mike at the top with the Eiffel Tower

We then headed to our final destination of the night, the Arc de Triomphe.  We walked all the way down Champs Elysees, a famous avenue with lots of expensive stores on it.  I got my first French crepe on the way, nutella...mmm so good!  Somehow I got chocolate EVERYWHERE, even inside my jacket, which we had a good laugh about pretty much all week.  We walked under the huge roundabout that surrounds it (chaos), and made it to the top after many more spiral stairs.  I used to think spiral staircases were cool, but after walking over 1,000 of them in a few days, they are no longer fun.  There is also a "Tomb of the Unknown Soldier" under the arc, very neat considering I have laid a wreath on the one in the US at Arlington Cemetery. 

That night we had planned to eat a a French restaurant, but the homey ones were ridiculously small, the tables were too close for our American taste, so we found a much less crowded one with an English menu.  Mike finally got to try veal, but I felt awful when I tasted it, baby cow :(  I had a pizza that was AMAZING, which is strange because there was no meat on it.  It had eggplant, zucchini, and lots of other veggies, and it is now definitely in my top 5 favorite pizzas I've ever eaten, YUM!