Today I had the fun experience of standing in line to make reservations for Sat. on the super fast train. Although an older woman was feeling crabby as she thought I'd jumped in front of her in line, it turned out I had the necessary and correctly numbered ticket and she didn't. So I got to sit down before her and she had to go get a ticket at the back of the line! But the SNCF (National Train company) guy was super nice and took care of what I needed.
Then, we were off to Versailles. By the time we got there, besides looking for a toilette, we decided to eat lunch. So we found a cut restaurant named Le Chien Qui Fume (The dog who smokes) and had a fabulous 3 course lunch. The propriator was so polite and gave us souveniers of the restaurant. I think he was impressed that we went for the French Menu instead of the easy route of the English one. I admit that I wasn't always sure what we'd end up with (high end cuisine vocabulary was never my strength). But everyone loved their 3 courses including my very elegant chocolate mousse in pastery with whip cream on the side.
After that hugely satisfying lunch, we were ready for the rest of the walk to the Palais and to be blinded by gold. We navigated the slightly confusing and overly buraucratic system for buying tickets and entering the museum. We did not spend a lot of time in any one room except the Hall of Mirrors.
This room is somewhat more special since, somehow my Aunt had been invited to a very fancy dinner served there and was able to invite my father. So they ate dinner with gloved waiters for each guest. It was a nice moment for us to remember my dad.
We did not see much as a 9 yr old cannot really enjoy the subtle differences between Louis XIV and Louis XVI style! It was enough to see how well the king lived and talk about how little their lives were about their own wishes.
We hit the gardens and then the gift store - always fun.
During the walk back, we encountered some kind of police excitement - Les Flics (cops) driving around, mucking up traffic and waving machine guns out of their windows. Norrine thinks there was just some visiting dignitary in town and they were showing their might! Funny though, how big the machine gun seemed out the window of a little French Renault!
Hoping to get my act together and post some pics tomorrow!
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