Versailles and zipped to London

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Got up a little late this morn, due to getting to bed at 1:00 or ? last night. Went down to the subway and bought a ticket to Versailles, which is a town about a 30 minute ride south of Paris. They have a palace there by the same name and if you say the name, most people will think of the castle. We had to ride the subway to another station and transfer to an RER train. They serve outlying areas of the city. Anyhow it was a double decker train, so we sat on the upper level. This was a palace that was started by King Louis XIII and then really expanded by his son King Louis XIIII. They say it probably would have taken 1/2 the annual gross domestic product of France to build it. We went to the gardens first, because they are full of fountains and ponds. These fountains were built several hundred years ago so there were no pumps then, but they are gravity fed from a river somewhere. They only run them on Sat. and Sunday from 11 to noon and 3:30 to 5:00. They were pretty spectacular and used a very large amount of water - and probably 20 of them in the gardens. The gardens had a lot of areas that were trees probably 30' tall with about 15' wide straight paths through them with the trees trimmed straight up on the sides. But, there were a lot of pretty flowers and grass, too. There were several outdoor restaurants in the gardens, so we bought us some food. I had sausage and fries and Linda had a ham, tomato, and mozarella cheese panini. After that we went through the palace. It took about 2 hours to make a pass through it. Just awe and amazement everywhere you looked! I cant even begin to describe all the marble, intricate carvings and excess that was in there! By this time we both felt like we had been run over by a train, so we went and got on the train for the ride back to Paris. We strolled around awhile again on Rue Cler Street trying to decide where to eat (and gawking). We decided on Cafe Du Marche and both had sirloin steak with salads and potatoes. Was quite good! We did like the Parisians did and spent a long time eating and sitting. We then went to the motel and collected our luggage that we had left with them and took another subway ride to Gare de la Est train station. There we boarded the Eurostar for a nighttime ride to London. We got into London about 9:30 local time (gained an hour) and found that the subway line to our station was closed for the weekend, so we asked an attendant what to do and she just told us right off which trains to take and how to get there. We had about 2 blocks to walk after we got off the subway to our motel. This was a Holiday Inn Express and looked to be about new. We checked in and went to our room, and boy did it look good! It was almost like an American room except fairly small. It even had a couch in it. Linda would have liked to have had a tub to soak in, but it still just had a shower - but the biggest shower we have had yet, about 3 X 3 feet. It even had a coffee maker - and free coffee! The internet had to be paid for though, so I called to the desk and they gave me a login and password. I worked for quite some time and could not get it to work. One of the hotel employees even worked on it for awhile and couldn't get it. Well, finally he decided it was a problem with their system and said he would tell them to fix it in the morning. Well, it still didn't work in the morning, or in the evening. They told me in the morning the maint. man would be there and he could get it to work. No, he couldn't either, but other people were connecting just fine, so it had to be in my computer. So here I am at Starbucks updating, but they are ready to close, so I guess I will have to write about the next several days, later.

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