Tourism continued

I left off at the gardens of Versailles. The highly manicured gardens were Louis XIV way of showing his godliness by his ability to control nature. There is even an orange grove -- think, orange trees in cold and cloudy Paris -- but he (his talented gardeners anyway) made it happen. The gardens are gigantic, spanning 800 hectacres of countryside. In the center of the garden is a mile long, man-made pond in the shape of a cross.

The gardens at Versaille.

There are many small cafes in the gardens that sell reasonably priced sandwiches and ice cream cones. After eating a sandwich, I bought a delicious soft-serve chocolate and vanilla swirl ice cream cone. I was too busy enjoying it to take a picture, but it was one of the best ice cream experiences of recent memory.

We then walked out to the domain of Marie Antoinette to tour her country house. It was similar to the chateau, but with fewer murals and less gold. My feet hurt horribly by this point, so I didn't enjoy it that much, but there was one room that was a bright canary yellow that I absolutely loved.

A canary yellow room at the domaine de Marie-Antoinette.

At this point, I was pooped and we decided to head back to Paris. But, we were distracted by a beautiful fountain show that happens on the summer evenings. So we hung in there and watched the pretty fountains before heading back to the city for dinner.

Picture of people taking pictures of me taking pictures of the fountains.

Dinner was incredible. We took the train over to the Marais neighborhood and ate at a cute little cafe near the Pompidou Center. After dinner, we walked over to the Pompidou Center, snapped some photos, and headed home.

Photos from the evening.

We took the RER back home to an extra-bed-less room and spent another night squished on my tiny, probably not even twin-widthed bed. Oh well. It wasn't so bad really.

My advisor was supposed to fly out of SFO on Saturday afternoon and arrive in Paris on Sunday morning, but his flight was cancelled due to the plane crash at SFO. Fortunately, he was able to reschedule his flights and arrived this morning. Pretty amazing considering how chaotic it must have been to fly out of SFO that day.

That left our Sunday free for tourism as well. We started off with a nice breakfast at a cafe near my place. I had a cafe latte and a croissant filled with chocolate. Mmmm!

A typical Parisian breakfast.

We went for a stroll along the Seine and passed by many historic Parisian landmarks including Notre Dame, the Conciergerie, and the Louvre. Apparently, all major museums are free on the first Sunday of the month so the line at the Louvre was crazy! I'm glad we had no intentions of visiting it.

The Notre Dame cathedral on the shores of the Seine.

After our little walking tour we stopped for a sweltering lunch in a small cafe near the Seine. It was delicious, but we were sitting directly in the sun, so it was a somewhat unpleasant experience. We went from there to the Pompidou Center where the crowds were sparse and the art was fun. I like contemporary art. It makes me smile.

We got back home just in time for Tina to throw her stuff in her suitcase and run off to the airport, sealing off a successful weekend of tourism!