Cinq jours Parisienne (quatriéme)

Tuesday, like Monday, started a bit later than we'd intended, but I honestly don't think an earlier arrival at Versailles would've made the line too much shorter.  It wasn't a painful wait, really, just long-- fortunately, we'd stocked up on a baguette plus cheese and fruit in our hotel's neighborhood (goat cheese with craisins? Wondrous).  We finally got in and did the tour, and wow.  Just, wow.  My bleeding-heart liberal self isn't sure how anyone could justify building something like Versailles with peasants starving in the streets of Paris, but at least they did it in style.  Lots of style.  Solid audio tour, too-- not too much information, but enough.

The gardens were, for me, the really worthwhile part.  In every direction we wandered, from finding a lunch spot to a bathroom, to Marie Antoinette's mini-palace and -village areas, it seemed like the land just kept going, with manicured lawns and topiary and lakes and more wow factor.  We got a few great sister-pictures from miscellaneous English-speaking tourists, although it's very much worth noting that Emily's French was good enough to carry on whole conversations that I could understand most of but definitely not participate in.  Bully for M. Warsaw back in Norfolk!

After we saw Marie Antoinette's area and discovered we had two broken cameras on our hands, we started heading back, and the fact that her mini-peasant village was closed for restoration speeded that up a bit.  After a good nap on the ride home, we had a bit of downtime at the hotel before we met up with Andrew and his friend Becca near the Ecole Militaire, where we met up with Andrew's other grandparents, who kindly took us all out for a wonderful dinner.   Afterwards, Andrew and Becca showed us to a very cool café-bar with old foosball tables tacked to the wall, a live baby chilling at the bar with its patron-mother, and a very hygge atmosphere (particularly considering we weren't in Denmark!), down to the candles.  The conversation continued for several hours until they realized they had classes the next day and we called it a night.