We finally made it to Paris!  Jenn was here years ago, but I have never been.  I had been looking forward to the trip since we started planning.

The flight wasn’t that great.  It left Chicago around 6pm and arrived in Paris in the morning.  Since I couldn’t sleep on the flight, it made the first day pretty tough.  To make it worse, I’d planned a full day at Versailles for our very first day.

Catching the train from CDG wasn’t too hard, and we transferred at St. Michel to the Versailles train.  The train was fast and the trip uneventful.  I think it cost around €15.  We walked several blocks to find the tourist information building (there is an easy to find outfit that claims to be tourist info, good location I guess but it seemed a little scammy) and from there we got a map and our 6 day Paris Museum Passes then walked a few blocks further to our hotel.  We stayed at Hotel du Jeu de Paume.  It was nice and had all the amenities we needed.

After dropping off our stuff, we headed to Versailles Palace.  The palace is huge but the grounds are enormous!  There were probably hundreds of fountains.  The grounds were incredibly well manicured, but we were there too early in the year to really enjoy the gardens.  The palace itself was richly decorated (of course)with lots of gold and intricate carvings.  It was peek into history.

The following day we took the train back to Paris.  We met with Adrien, the  landlord, for the apartment we were renting for the week.  It was a pretty nice place, though I couldn’t stand fully upright in the hallway unless I skirted the wall.  Which was perfectly fine since we didn’t plan to spend a great deal of time there anyway.  We found it on VRBO though Adrien has his own website for his properties as well.  As soon as we could, we headed to Musee d’Orsay.

Musee d’Orsay is big.  It was the Orsay Railway station, built for the Universal Exhibition of 1900.  The Opera exhibit was fascinating, the impressionist works, and the clocks that face the Seine.  We moved on to the Orangerie next.  There, we saw Monet’s Water Lilies series.  That was fantastic.  The Musee de l’Orangerie has a ‘virtual visit’ on their website that allows you to view these paintings.  They are truly fantastic.

Just outside, the Paris Marathon was taking place.  We did some walking around and found a food cart on the street making Crepes.  The Crepe was delicious, but to be honest, I think you could slather Nutella on newspaper and it would be tasty.  We stopped by a small grocery store and then a Boulangerie (bakery) before heading back to the Tuileries Garden where we sat around a fountain and enjoyed a fresh baguette.  The fountain was circled by chairs that I imagined were set out permanently for the people of Paris.  It reminded me of El Jardin in San Miguel, where the park was really everyone’s living room.  After our snack we rode the Ferris Wheel.  It was really fantastic looking out over the city at night.

The next morning I got up fairly early (too early) and we followed a historic walking tour around Ile de la Cite and the left bank.  We toured Notre Dame and Saint Chappelle before stopping at a Fromagerie (cheese shop).  Notre Dame is a pretty incredible building.  The gargoyles and flying buttresses are very imposing.  Saint Chappelle probably has the most stained glass I’ve ever seen in a church.  It was really beautiful, we were fortunate to have seen it on such a clear, sunny day.  That afternoon we enjoyed a tour at Opera Garnier, the opera house that inspired Phantom of the Opera.  Afterwards, we headed southwest and picked up a Seine river cruise, wandered down Rue Cler and gaped at the Eiffel Tower.  That evening, Jenn enjoyed French Onion soup at a cafe near our apartment.

We slept in a little the next morning before following a self guided Marias walking tour.  Along our route we visited the Picasso Museum.  We also went to the Arc de Triomph, Eiffel Tower and the Pompidou center.  When we stopped for lunch I had Steak Tartare and I found it rather exceptional.  It is a seasoned ground steak served raw.  It was delicious though very rich.  We stopped at a Jewish bakery and a butcher shop and watched the butcher take a morning shipment of quarter cows.

The Louvre is much, much larger than I imagined.  It is the largest museum in the world and by quite a margin, I think.  It’s so big, you can’t hope to see much of what they have.  We followed a Rick Steve’s walking tour of the Louvre from his app.  It pointed out the brightest of the highlights with some history.

After the Louvre, we bought our train tickets to Amsterdam then headed to Montmartre for a food tour.  Montmartre was beautiful and the food tour we took was outstanding.  Per usual, we booked it through Viator.  We had macarons, crepes, truffles, an eclair, a number of amazing cheeses and some cured meats.  Well, and baguettes of course.  (I bought fresh baguettes every day we were in France)

The following day we went to Veaux le Vicomte, Fontaineblue.  It was another palace similar to Versaille.  The palace itself was very nice but the grounds were fantastic.  Since we had limited time we rented a golf cart to drive around the grounds.  The golf cart was a blast!  I don’t think it was supposed to be, but we found it a wonderful way to quickly enjoy a leisurely visit to the grounds of Veaux le Vicomte.  The next day we took the train to Amsterdam.