Advertisement
Published: February 11th 2013
Edit Blog Post
001
Versailles This morning we had the option of going to see the palace of Versailles outside of Paris. This extravagant palace's most famous inhabitants were Louis XIV (the Sun King) and Marie Antoinette, and it is now a symbol of the absolute monarchy and the French Revolution of the 1700's. Only about half the tour decided to go - I'm guessing the others had either already been or were too hungover from the cabaret the night before. I heard it was totally crazy. I woke up with a bad sore throat this morning. I was really hoping I wasn't getting sick. I was expecting the Contiki cough, but not for a while yet.
I was excited to go to Versailles, I'd heard it was very spectacular. It is enormous! And the lineups were just as long, they seemed to go on forever. There were two lineups: one to get tickets, and another to get into the palace. Me, Colleen (from Australia), Debs (from New Zealand), and David (also from Australia) waited in the wrong line at first, only to get to the front to find out we still had to buy tickets. So we ended up waiting in three lines and
002
Jason, Teresa, Jay, Jamie, me, Verity, Colleen, Tommy, and Rosi at the Notre Dame wasted a lot of time. It started raining right before we got our tickets, the first sign of bad weather on the tour so far. After getting our tickets, and finally getting inside the palace, we started our tour. The inside was SO crowded. Easily the most crowded tourist attraction I've ever been in. It was interesting to see the inside, but not worth fighting with the crowds. It would have been better to see the gardens, which were very beautiful, especially once the sun came out again. The one thing our group was really interested in seeing was the famous Hall of Mirrors, but once we finished our tour we couldn't remember seeing it, so we assumed we had missed it. Turns out we had walked all the way through it, plus even stopped for photos, without even realising we were there. Duhhhh.
After seeing Versailles, we were driven back to Paris and dropped off at the Notre Dame cathedral. A big group of us decided to try to find the Catacombs. We got there to find that the lineup was all the way down the street and it would have ben over an hour's wait. We decided
003
Emma, me, Debs, Chloe, Verity, Rosi, and Colleen at dinner to skip it, because it was getting to be the afternoon and there were lots of other things we wanted to do. We all stopped at McDonald's to get something to eat, then some of the group decided to go back to the hotel to sleep. The rest of us got lost trying to get the metro back to Notre Dame. We went inside the church, got lots of photos, and did some souvenir shopping. We had to buy a white shirt because we would be having a whiteboard party at the Chateau (our next stop). We ended up walking all the way back to the Louvre, our meeting point for that evening.
While waiting for the bus to pick us up, a few of us got some beers and drank them out in front of the Louvre. It is very strange being able to drink in public in Europe. Something that we definitely can't do at home! Back at the hotel we got changed and ready for our first optional dinner as a group.
Parisian dinner (34 euro): This typically French bistro dishes up loads of atmosphere and is the perfect place to get to know your
004
Debs, me, and Verity group over a 3-course meal.
The dinner was pretty good (compared to average Contiki food), and there was lots of wine, yummm. We actually took some of the bottles that were leftover, so that we could drink them at the Eiffel Tower later. After dinner our coach took us to the Eiffel Tower so that we could see it illuminated at night. It was so beautiful all lit up. We all got comfortable in our sleeping bags and sat in front of it drinking our wine. We were a bit drunk, and it was so much fun hanging out with all of my new friends. It was a great night!
What did I learn today? Never give up a bottle of free wine, especially when you have a large purse.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.14s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 6; qc: 47; dbt: 0.0708s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb