Sunday - Monte Cristo

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Geo: 48.8566, 2.35097

Sunday, June 1:
Well, we slept in today till 8! yahoo! really slow morning, got out of the apt. ~11:30ish. Our first stop was the Fat Tire place so Dad could have them check out his camera and download his pictures to a CD. This took a while then we walked to the Duplieux Metro station and caught the RER A to St. Germain en Laye, saw the castle that was used by the Kings of France till Louis the 14th had Versailles fixed up when he became an adult. This was an anthropological museum, no tour of the castle.... we could obviously see some of it and of course got to walk up lots of stairs as was our habit :-).. also got to see a real moat that was outside and a beautiful garden designed by the famous designer Le Notre. We pretty much "ran" through it as my real reason for getting out to this neck of the woods was to see one of my favorite authors home, Alexandre Dumas of the "Three Musketeers" fame and his Monte Cristo (named from his book "The Count of Monte Cristo"😉, Well we caught the #10 bus in front of the castle to Marly le Roi and got off at Monte Cristo Square. This was only with the help of some very nice French people, I will tell you that God sent nice people every step of the way to help us out! Well, we got off the bus after one young lady, one old lady and the bus driver made sure we were where we needed to be and told us where to meet the bus on our way back. Once on our own, we didn't know what to do! anyway down I went on a couple of private drives to find someone to point us in the right direction as there were no signs pointing the way to this famous landmark! and the "square" was a bus stop on the road! so after some extra exercise we finally realized we should walk in the direction the bus went after it dropped us off (that's a tip if you're going!) go up the hill and then there is a large sign on the left, we followed this around an 180 degree corner, so we are now going back the way we came but with a bit of a hill between us and the original road... we now go down a hill (that later we get to go back up.. get the picture?) then Voila! we found it....The grounds were wonderful, the Chateau delightful from the outside, Chateau D'If (his writing retreat, small but near main house) a fantasy picture. This whole thing was a fantasy of his and he did a wonderful job and the restorers did a wonderful job of recreating his dream. To get into this we had to sign up for the French language tour, I was so disappointed at not understanding what she said because she had a lot to say! I know I would have loved hearing all about him and his life here. I have read so many of his books (and his travel books are even better) so that I feel as though I know him.... took lots of pictures 😊 Climbed back up the hill to the bus stop, waited for an hour for the bus to get back to us, we must have just missed it coming back... we made our way back to the train station found the RER A took it back to Paris, then got on the 6 then the 8 to Ecole Militaire.
An interesting example of how nice people were to us and how God prepared the way for His hapless travelers:
At the RER Charles De Gaule Etoile station, there was no one to buy our tickets out to St. Germain en Laye from. We could go no farther until a nice young couple explained to us how to use the ticket machine. Well, it only takes credit cards (ours don't have a chip and can't be used) or coins. We didn't have the 21 euros in coins needed for 3 round trip tickets on us! what to do! after they walked a bit away the man came back and said if we had the cash he would put it on his credit card for us. Hooray! I know, I know, I've heard about people pulling a scam on you with this... He even made sure we got on the right train and told us when to get off! also, I haven't been shy about asking people on the street for directions and have always been pleasantly helped.

When we got back to "our" neighborhood we each had an egg, cheese, onion, tomato, and green pepper crepe from a vendor on Rue Cler. Needed something a bit healthful at this point. Got back to the apt 8:45, ready for bed and had some tea with our news from CNN.

13,740 steps today!

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Photos

Chateau d'If
This is where Alexandre Dumas would escape to write and get away from some of his guests!