I spent my Toussaint vacation in Paris, hanging out with Ashley before she shipped back to the States. She continued giving English lessons before her departure so I found I had a lot of free time on my hands. I’ve been to Paris so many times before in the past, that there really isn’t anything there for me to see that I haven’t seen before. At least, I thought that was true until I happened to see a metro map of Paris and realized that Versailles was only an hour ride away on the RER C line. All this time I’ve been here and I thought you had to drive to get there. Ashley had an afternoon full of lessons one day so I packed my bag and headed to the former home of the French royal family.
As I suspected, the place is a giant tourist magnet, the likes of which rival the Louvre or the Eiffel Tower. While I’m happy I finally crossed that place off of my to-see list, I can’t help but say that the whole experience left a very funny taste in my mouth. For starters, the castle was built by Louis the 14th in the 17th century with the purpose of moving the capital away from Paris and to help take power away from the nobles by making them spend time at his cool, new pad and in the end declare himself complete ruler of France. Well, there were also a bunch of people in his kingdom starving and dying of disease, so the fact that the “Sun King” spent a grotesque amount of money for his own selfish desires instead of his people just makes the whole palace seem like such a giant waste of resources.
Back to the present day, I bought my ticket and did the tour complete with my portable audio-guide and while the gilded woodwork, the tapestries, the antiques and the paintings were all wonderful and beautiful, they didn’t excite me. I felt like I could have been walking through the Decorative Arts section of the Louvre - something I’ve done more than my fair share of. Have you also ever noticed how annoying tourists can be? It’s not so much that people traveling to places that annoys me; it’s the whole tourist mindset that disturbs me. If visiting a country or city becomes a checklist of things to do, where’s the enjoyment in that? Likewise, why do people take so many photographs or videos during their trips? At Versailles, for example, everyone was crowding in a bedroom, pushing people to take a photo, holding cameras above people’s heads. What’s the point of taking these horrible, terribly exposed, poorly composed photos when there have got to be better photographs taken by pros with professional equipment of the same room somewhere online. Again, the waste.
If there was one positive thing I got out of Versailles, it was the adjacent gardens which were GIGANTIC (1,976 acres!!) Not to mention it was 100% cheaper than the tour of the castle. The thing is practically a city park, and had I more time or a friend to walk around with, I would have definitely stayed until past dark.
The rest of the trip was merely a 12 day sojourn in which I did nothing any of you would be interested in hearing about. I ate, cleaned, wrote, drank wine, walked, watched some TV, etc etc. A real vacation in my opinion. But now I’m back in Lyon, all of my stuff is unpacked and I’m ready to start a new chapter in my visit here. The future is definitely hazy, but it sure looks promising.
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