Versailles, Napoleon, and a boat cruise...oh my!

This morning I met the kids at school, and we headed out to Versailles. They enjoyed Marie Antoinette's room the most after the Galleries des Glaces (Hall of Mirrors). Despite the fact that we often found ourselves trapped in Japanese tour groups, we managed to squeeze through the gold-drenched rooms of the castle, and get out to the gardens. I had to kill some time before lunch, so I led the group thru one of the maze-like gardens. Then I went in two circles. They were not fans of that! When we finally came out of the maze, we were back on the main path, and this one boy said, "Are you kidding me? We could've just walked right here!" Whatever-fresh air is good for them. It was there that I realized I was wearing a scarf that Libby, a student on the trip, gave to me for Christmas about 3 years ago. We took a picture commemorating this discovery. The whole group ate lunch at La Flotille, a restaurant on the garden grounds. We all had mushroom and ham omelets, salad, fries, and a pear tarte. Delicious. The kids liked it as well, and even were able to sit and eat for an hour and a half. They are becoming French so quickly! We walked back to the castle when they had to have a break and sit on the steps. I made fun of them for all being Varsity sport athletes, and yet I was the only one walking quickly and not needing a break.

After Versailles, we went to Les Invalides, where Napoleon is buried. Wow. Obviously someone thought highly of himself. He had a whole church built just to house his tomb, which is located under the giant rotunda. It is ginormous. And when you walk in, you have to go to this circular wall and look down at it. You can go down a flight of stairs and be eye-level as well. On the bottom level, all around the walls are carvings of him in the walls in different religious/god-like scenes. Napoleon complex much? One student, Sam, wanted to know if it were too much to expect something similar for his own tomb. I assured him, no. We then had an hour to explore other parts of the museum. It's all a military museum with several different exhibitions inside. I chose to walk through the WWI and WWII part. Several students also did this one. I thought the WWI stuff was very interesting just because I don't know as much about WWI as I do about WWII. The WWII part was interesting as well because it told the story from a French perspective. Of course, early on it became more about England and the United States. All of the uniforms were American, and the pictures were all of Eisenhower, McArthur, and Churchill. So I felt as if I were in the DDay Museum, only with less stuff. They eventually moved to the Resistance, but it was underwhelming. The most interesting thing to me was a sign pointing the way to different streets, but all the "streets" were named German things or were German offices. The French name for the street was written very small underneath.

Les Invalides is basically just set back from La Seine River, so we walked up to the river and hung out on Pont Alexandre III. It's my favorite bridge in Paris. We took pictures, did some dancing, and then headed over to the Eiffel Tower. We bought crepes to eat and took them on our boat cruise, which leaves at the base of the Tower. Though it was windy on the water, we braved the cold to sit outside where the pictures are better and where you can wave and blow kisses to the people walking on the banks of the river. Always fun.

At last we met the hosts at school at 6:30. Fabienne and I took the metro to her apartment, ate dinner, and watched a French sitcom. It was amusing, but certainly not something I'd watch on a regular basis. It was a series of vignettes and no one in one vignette knows the other vignettes' characters. How do they have a plot out of that? Well, they don't. So typical French. It's just people sitting around and talking.

Tomorrow I get to be the guest "question answerer" in Fabienne's English class in the morning, and in the afternoon we are off to the top of the Arc de Triomphe.