O'Connors on the Road

This is it. The big show. Sean may have gone on vacation to Paris with the trip to Versailles as a bonus, but for me it was the other way around.

It was every bit as opulent as I’d expected. And so very gold.

The only part that actually does seem grander in the movies was the Hall of Mirrors. It’s one of the largest rooms we saw, so fortunately the least crowded. (Seriously, I hadn’t expected to keep waiting in line once we were actually inside the palace, but there were quite a few traffics jams in the halls.)

We knew in advance that the Queen’s State Apartments and the Apartments of the Dauphin and Dauphine would be closed for renovation (which was pretty devastating, as those were the parts I wanted to see most), but we were able to go through the King’s State Apartments and the Apartments of Mesdames (Louis XV’s unmarried daughters).

We spent most of the day walking through the gardens, which are so massive that they let you rent golf carts to ride through them. We did it all on foot, for historical accuracy, and logged over 30,000 steps. I doubt we even saw half of the property.

The true highlight for me was the Petit Trianon, which served as a private escape from court life for Marie-Antoinette. It’s no secret that I’m completely obsessed with her, so this was almost like a religious experience for me. I got teary-eyed at the thought that I was walking where she walked and seeing all the wonderful details that she chose when she decorated the palace.

Sean liked it, too.

While visiting the Hameau de la Reine (the Queen’s Hamlet, a working farm built by Marie-Antoinette), some pretty ominous clouds rolled in. We made it back to the Grand Trianon, once inhabited by the wife of Napoleon, just in time to escape a short hail storm.

To make a great day even better, I got to take home a pretty excellent souvenir.

As you may be able to infer from the continued lack of posts, our Internet connection is still not great in Italy. We’ve made it through our whirlwind tour of Florence (which we’ll cover in detail once we’re able to post photos again) and on to Rome, where the weather is finally nice. We spent the better part of today exploring ancient Rome, including the Colosseum, the Roman Forum and Palatine Hill, with a quick visit to the Capitoline Museum to see the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius and the remains of the great monument to Constantine.

Tuesday: Notre Dame (including a 490-step climb to the top of the bell towers), the Archaeological Crypt of Notre Dame (Medieval ruins discovered during the renovation of the Cathedral, not pictured), the Musée des Arts et Métiers and dinner at a Cat Café (pictured is Zan, our favorite cat, who nearly succeeded in stealing from our neighbors’ charcuterie platter).

We got up bright and early on Monday to get ahead of the crowds at the Louvre (which isn’t really possible, but we were close to the front of the line, at least). It’s one of the many places we have access to on our Paris Museum Pass, which has proven to be the best ‎€72 we could have spent on this trip.

On our race to peek at the Mona Lisa before a massive wall of tourists formed in front of her, we managed to see the Winged Victory of Samothrace with just a few other visitors present.

The best part of the day was having a few minutes (almost) alone with David’s Coronation of Napoleon. We couldn’t believe there weren’t more people in this gallery (which also included other famous works by David, Delacroix and Gericault, among others). It was much more crowded later, when we came back for a final viewing before heading home.

We saw about a million statues.

And Sean found plenty of new ways to embarrass me in public.

My compensation was getting to spend an especially long time enjoying the Napoleon III apartments.

Bonus: We also saw the Eiffel Tower for the first time. Sort of.

So the photo uploading is basically a no-go. Either our photo files are too large (likely, since Sean bought himself a Very Fancy Camera for this trip) or the Internet is just too slow.

Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature

After reading about the Museum of Hunting and Nature in a waiting room copy of National Geographic, I decided we absolutely had to go. It had all my favorite things - taxidermy, antique weaponry and the sumptuous décor of an 18th-century mansion.

Woven into its old-timey ambiance were curious pieces of decidedly modern art (and generally I’m not a fan, but somehow it actually worked).

The most in-theme Don’t-Sit-Here sign I’ve ever seen.

Sainte-Chapelle

We exited the museum to discover that the sun had finally come out, and thus decided to book it over the the Île de la Cité to see Sainte-Chapelle in all its glory.

This was one of the sites I was most excited to see and it did not disappoint.

Conciergerie

Next to Sainte-Chapelle is the Conciergerie prison, the first stop on my Marie-Antoinette pilgrimage. Like many who were executed during the French Revolution, she spent her final days there before being taken to the guillotine.

They’ve recreated an approximation of her cell, which was admittedly much larger than the other examples on view. The site of her actual cell is now a small chapel to her memory, where I admit I had a bit of a cry.

Finally, Sean demands that I include this picture of myself not understanding how pockets work: