France Trip Day 3

DAY 3

I don’t know how I actually got up today as I was so tired. It was like I was drugged… something in the cheese… I knew it tasted weird. However, obviously all the walking and jet lag was starting to catch up so we decided to take day 3 a little slower.

We had another quiet Parisian breakfast before taking the RER train out to Versailles. This was actually my third time out here but Erin hadn’t been, so it was nice to be there with her. Considering it was the off season, there were hordes of tourists heading up there. Lucky for us, we found a little ticket vendor separate from the main Chateau and were able to skip the giant line spilling out into the cold.

Walking around the Chateau, it is just so incredibly ornate with amazing artwork that you actually get a bit desensitised to it after every room you go into. How did people actually live in this place without getting freaked out? Either way, I’m equally baffled at where they got all the artists to actually make all the artwork because there is so much of it. Maybe everyone back in the 19th Century was a stellar artist?

We took a long walk through the gardens to Marie Antoinette’s play house. It took us about ½ hour to get there… to give you an idea of distance. The gardens keep going as well, and are full of amazing sculptures and fountains. It could very well be bigger than Brisbane’s CBD. Interesting.

By the time we had finished with the gardens, we came back to Paris and had the privilege of meeting Ted Mathot, Bill Pressing and Dean Yeagle at a comic book signing near our hotel. They were all super top guys and had the time to each draw me a picture of their cool characters. For me this will probably be a better souvenir than an Eiffel tower t-shirt.

Although we’re enjoying a lot of the food, we’re having a funny run with dinner. Eating out in the Latin Quarter gives you lots of variety but the streets resemble a Moroccan market place. Walking down the narrow alleys lined with restaurants, every restaurant owner is out in the street trying to outbid the guy on the other side of the street. The problem is, you can get pulled in by a good salesman and then sit down for a fairly rubbish meal. At least you have a good story to tell afterwards. Tomorrow I think we’ll try and find a place off the beaten track a little… maybe in Monmartre.