Days Four and Five

The Sainte Chapelle.......beautiful. My pictures do not do it justice!
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We spent day four seeing some of the big sights of Paris.  We left our apartment early in the morning and set out for the Ile de la Cite.  We went to Sainte Chapelle, the chapel created for the royal family on the Ile de la Cite.  It consists of two levels, the lower chapel for the servants, the upper chapel for the royal family.  It is a gothic chapel with incredible stained windows.  The interior is painted, every column and arch painted with bright colors.  They say that Notre Dame, created in the same general time period was also painted inside, on every portion of the stone.  We went on a cloudy day which allowed for even light on each window, but not vibrant color, as it could have been.  Each window represented a part of the bible.  The rose window represented Revelation, and the other windows books such as Ruth, Exodus, Genesis and the gospels.

The Apocalypse Window at the end of Sainte Chapelle. Some of the pictures were very hard to identify, even for the books of the bible that I knew well.
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Afterward, we took the Metro to the Louvre and spent MANY hours fighting through crowds to see all the treasures.  We spent most of our time with the artifacts of Mesopotamia, Egypt, and sculptures of the Middle Ages and beyond.  I had the most fun making fun of the sculptures.  We found it very funny to invent things we believed the sculptures to be saying.  We had great fun doing this.

I did in fact see the Mona Lisa, but it is actually quite small.  By the time we got to the paintings wing (almost 4 hours later) we decided we had had enough and the crowds were really, REALLY bad.  You had to push to get anywhere and we are not crowd people.

On the left you can see pictures of Jesus' childhood, and then the passion of Christ is directly behind the altar.
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Pick-pocketing is very common here in Europe.  Because I am not a French citizen I need to carry my passport on me at all times as proof of my citizenship.  But in the big crowds, especially in small places it is important to be carrying your purse in front of you and I usually keep my hand on it.  That way I feel if it has been cut from my shoulders or if the zipper to the card compartment has been broken.  I may be paranoid, but at least I have all my stuff still!

After the Louvre we headed to Le Tour Eiffel.  (Eiffel Tower, to us Americans)  We stopped at a cafe down the street and had dinner.  Everything here costs more, especially things we consider staples like coke or junk food.  When we got to the Eiffel tower it lit up and sparkled.....everyone said "oooooooooooh" as the lights came on.  It was neat.  We had been planning on going to the top to see the city in lights, but it was very foggy and we wouldn't have been able to see anything.  Instead we just stayed down and explored a little.

The Louvre. We found a back entrance because we had the Paris Museum pass. A GREAT time and money saving thing, in case you ever travel to Paris! The line was very long to enter, and we got in in less than 2 minutes. HA!
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For our fifth day in France we went out to Versailles to see the Chateau and all the places Kelsey goes to school.  We saw the school of architecture, which is actually a carriage house/stable for the chateau.  We went to her favorite bakery and met her host family in the evening.  The chateau at Versailles was once the country hunting lodge for the king.  Then in the reign of I think Louis XIII it was converted into a gigantic palace where parties and large events happened.  At the height of it's fame 8,000 people lived in the palace, including the royal family, the court and of course all of the servants and staff that kept the palace running.  We explored the gardens, which were fairly plain because it is winter, but it became clear that in the days of the royal family each corner must have been manicured for afternoon parties and secret moments by the members of the court.  It was very romantic as is most of Paris, but of course I am traveling with my family!  We ate in a garden restaurant where I found a fly in my soup!  I have had horrible luck this trip.  I got stopped in security at the airport, I found a fly in my soup, broken glass in my banana split and I got stopped at a store just tonight because the cashier did not take the security tag off the little wallet I bought!  My family teases me horribly!

The staircase in the pyramid. The elevator was open air and literally went up and down in the center of the staircases. Way cool.
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The chateau itself was not in as good shape as the Louvre was.  The paint was peeling and the floors were weak in some places.  It was absolutely packed but in some rooms there wasn't much to see.  Just a big, ornate, empty room.  We were kinda ornate roomed-out so sometimes it was anti-climactic.  The Hall of Mirrors was beautiful, though, and had just been restored.  They were showing the royal silver in an exhibition (which was so full of people you were being pushed on all sides) with items so obnoxious it was incredible.  Silver chairs, silver side tables, silver dishes, silver mirrors, silver combs, silver bed pans, silver whatever you can think of in such a gaudy style it was almost ugly.  It makes sense then, I guess, that the royal house was overthrown if they squandered state money on items so rediculous.  But they could and they were rich, so why not?

"Sparticus won't share with me!"
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THEN we went to Kelsey's host family's home.  I have been sick the whole trip with a cold, so I was already feeling poorly, and then they offered us champagne, and three different wines.  Wine in France is a staple, of course, but I am not a drinker.  I did amazingly well, drank slowly, ate food with it and only got a little light-headed once.  The conversation was good and the family was very kind, but I don't like French cheese.  I hate to say it, but I cannot stand strong, stinky cheeses.  And they LOVE them here in France.  And to be polite I had to eat them!  I tell you what.  I don't really like wine and I REALLY don't like cheese, so when you start to drink more wine to wash down the stinky goat cheese and you still can't wash out the taste it is pretty bad.  GREAT people though!

Oh, just too romantic NOT to include it!
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I desperately need to get going though, we are going to start watching "Meet the Robinsons" for our evening at the apartment, and it takes FOREVER to upload pictures!