Paris: Day 2 - Versailles, Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe

Day two was easily my favorite day in Paris.  We took our time getting ready and enjoyed our complimentary breakfast of breads and various spreads before hitting the RER C over to Versailles.

I have a lot of tips that I think people everywhere, but particularly students will find very interesting.  We originally looked at booking a tour of Versailles which included coach fair to and from Versailles with a guided audio tour for £46.  That is a HUGE rip off.  Luckily we got some insider information on how to get to there and back for cheap.  Like London, Paris has it's underground and overground train services.  The RER is the over ground train service, and the train to Versailles is RER C called VICK.  Board the train anywhere in Paris and get off at Versailles River Gauches.  It cost the same amount as a regular metro ticket, which we had plenty of, and takes just about 40 minutes.  From the train we were able to see some more of the housing side of Paris and that was quite interesting.  All the housing has a certain style to it.  Ordered windows with some sort of  small ledge for keeping plants to spruce up your window.  It's a nice way to jazz up an otherwise mundane building.

Versailles for the Grand Canal

We got off the train and right around the corner was Versailles.  Even from down the street you could sense and see it's massiveness and massive expensiveness.  The gold gilding glinted in the sun giving off amazing flares of light.  Now here is where students of the EU need to pay attention.  We went to the ticket office to get our tickets.  We knew they had student discounts but weren't quite sure how much.  It cost a normal person €15-20 to get in depending of whether or not you want an audio guide.  Bailey and I flashed our UK student visas and we got in FOR FREE!!!  Hello Visa you are paying off wonderfully. Anyone between the ages of 18-26 in the EU can get into these sights for free, so work it people!

The palace was incredible.  Once again, I am a huge nerd when it comes to palaces and castles.  Much of my childhood was spent in romantic daydreams surrounding this sort of thing.  I was in heaven.  Inside the palace they had the room decorated in their timely state, and I was very impressed by the condition that everything was in.  Portraits took over the walls, and the furniture was very elaborate and grand.  Sculptures lines the walls while ceilings and doors were gilded in gold.  Someone had very expensive taste I must say.  It was beautiful to say the least.

After touring the apartments we went out to the gardens.  We splurged on a mini-train tour of the grounds.  We felt it was worth the €6.50 since we didn't pay to get in.  I captured a lot of footage and pictures, that I hope to make into a special video just for Versailles.  The grounds of Versailles are what I had always expected them to be gorgeous.  I wish we could have seen them in the summer time.  Fountains, pools, gardens covered the huge grounds.  In my opinion the retained very bit of there stateliness.  My pictures will have to do the talking for me.

This would have been my go to room for sure.

This room had crazy amounts of chandeliers.

A pretty sweet view, don't you think?

I had to get a jumping picture at some point on this trip.

Eiffel Tower.  Need I say anything at all?

After Versailles we hit up the RER and stopped at the Eiffel Tower.   I've seen hundreds of pictures in my life of this structure and yet I was still surprised at how tall it was.  We walked all the way around it and under it.  Unfortunately we didn't go to the top because the queue was huge.  So we settled for pictures on the ground and then set off for the Arc de Triomphe by foot.

It was about a 20 minute walk from the Eiffel Tower to the Arc.  We had been told to take the pedestrian subways under the street to the Arc because so many people have died trying to cross the normal way.  It was solid advice because there we found a ticket booth to go to the top of the Arc.  I jumped on the chance seeing how we didn't go to the top of the Eiffel Tower.  It was only €5.50 for students, but you had to take the stairs all the way to the top.  There were plenty of people taking breaks on the way up. The view from the top is spectacular.  You can see everything, and have a perfect vantage point on the city.

We found a piece of home on our way to the Arc.  Everyone say hi to the Liberty Flame

Arc de Triomphe

View from the top.

Sometime in our climb down the Eiffel tower lights had turned on.  I was sad that we had just missed them at the top.  But at the bottom there was some sort of ceremony going on.  There were soldiers, past and present, along with what looked like the equivalent of the American Girl and Boy Scouts.  I think was a ceremony to honor fallen soldiers but I'm not really sure.

It was about 8 at that point so we headed back towards the hotel, picking up a quick dinner along the way.  We finally got our TV working and watched the Vancouver games in French, snippets of the French news and some SVU in French before turning to the Disney channel to watch one of their movies in English.  Sad I know, but it was so good to be able to understand what was being said.

We left the next morning by coach.  Our driver got lost in Paris for about an hour before we actually left the city.  That evoked tons of confidence in him.  This time we took the chunnel back and it was much quicker.  It was weird because our bus boarded a train and rode the train underneath.  That was an experience, though not a very exciting one.  We were back in our bedroom by 9 and it felt good to be back.

My next adventures are this weekend.  I go to Cardiff, Wales on Friday and Oxford on Saturday to meet up with my old friend Katy to do some movie exploring.  This weeks updates to come soon.

Pip Pip Cheerio!