While rain continued to blanket Paris, I took a couple of down days. Here I am, smack dab in the middle of the supposedly 'most beautiful city on earth' (that remains highly contested, by the way)...
...and all I want to do is catch up on emails an dmy blog, wash up my nearly 3-week-old laundry, and if I was lucky, squeze in Versailles, the 2 museums I missed from Monday (Orsay & Rodin), and at the very least catch the opening for The DaVinci Code. Oh yeah, and it would be nice to see the Eiffel Tower. Yikes! What travel priorities I have!! Hollywood's latest before Paris's iconic monument!!
I managed to make it to Versailles, and despite the poor weather and gobs of African hawkers pelting me with their kitsch on the long walk to the front gate, found the palace quite remarkable. 20-foot ceilings, walls bedecked with marble, heavy velvet curtains, larger-than-life-size paintings of the noble family, status, sculptures, all kinds of royal treasures.The Hall of Mirrors, now 50% restored -- less than 15 years after its completion, restoration was already necessary, as the soot from smoking pipes and cigars, humidity from swarms of summer visitors and lavish balls, had begun fogging and clouding the mirrors, burying them in a thick layer of ash, and hiding from view the reflection of the immense gardens that lie just beyond the long wall.
Another huge hallway, lined with marble busts of French nobility, housed mural-sized oil canvases depicting famous battle scenes from French history. One in particular caught my eye, portraying a man with a long, while wig on horseback. I looked again, sure enough, it was George Washington. The final corridor leading to the immense gardens contained magnificant full-body sculptures of well-known nobility, set against a checkerboard floor....Dinner party with Seb's friends (rainbow theme... green chicken?). DVC at the cinema.
~Melanie
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