Versailles!

(This is continued from the last post - so scroll down to read about the first part of my weekend...)

Ok, so after a great time in Germany with my friend Carly, we headed to the night train from Munich to Paris. She would get off in Bonn at 5am, while I got to sleep until I reached Paris at 930. By then I was so exhausted that I slept like a rock. The only hitches were that I lost my reservation for about 30 minutes because it slid down between the beds and then I also woke up sleep talking --- hope I didnt wake the person up on the bunk below me!! But all in all, the night train was great and I arrived very refreshed to a beautiful Paris morning. I met my friend Cate (who's studying in Rennes with me) at the station and we headed off to Versailles!

Versailles (aka most incredible day ever)

This incredible day started off with me and Cate looking for the line to print off our electronic tickets. (We had both bought our tickets online, but there was a printing problem so all we had were our confirmation numbers.) So we asked a worker passing by which line we should get in, and in her uncertainty, she took us straight to the front of the line of people who had also bought electronic tickets. The worker at the front of the line said she would just take us right away and that we could go on in. Thanks to these two super awesome employees, Cate and I skipped an hour-long wait in line!! We had only been at the Palace for 10 minutes and there we were inside of it! We were so flabbergasted!

The palace was beautiful, just like I remembered, everything was so ornate and rich-looking. But the real wonder of the palace is the backyard. The grounds strech for miles and miles and include: hedge mazes, beautiful fountains, two other smaller palaces, gazeboes, a canal to replicate venice, hundreds of statues, flowers and sculted shrubbery, and a replica of an Austrian village where Marie Antoinette would pretend to be poor. We could have been there for ten hours more and not seen all of it. The sky was a cloudless blue and it was sunny and 70 all afternoon. It was so indescribably amazing. To top it all off, every Sunday the fountains go off and look so majestic and beautiful, some fountains even have little shows that cordinate to music. It was so magical! There were so many people just picnicking, playing frisbee, and sunbathing in the endless gardens. I wonder what King Louis XIV would say if he could see all these peasants enjoying his estate! All in all it was so wonderful and the only thing that finally convinced me it was time to go home was my aching feet - that were stupidly adorned in little slippers instead of good moutain-hiking and palace-strolling tennis shoes. I could barely walk by the time we got to McDonalds for dinner and practically passed out into my bed once we got back to Rennes. It was so tiring, but I would do it again in a heartbeat!!

Ok well that was my weekend, next week I should have some more stories because we'll be visiting the Loire Valley castles this upcoming weekend with my program! Hope you like the pictures (they're way below if you scroll down) and I hope you are all doing well! Drop me a line sometime! I love to hear how y'all are doing!

Ok, til next week!