On Saturday, as a group we went and visited the famous Château de Versailles. We took a 45 minute ride on the regional rail and arrived in a surprisingly suburb-y part of Paris. But then you turn a corner and there is a gold-studded mansion along with about 2000 acres of gardens filled with fountains. Talk about raising the price of the neighborhood.

Inside the Château is pretty sweet. You could spend three hours just looking at all of these ornate fixtures in the Château. The most famous room is the Hall of Mirrors, but I was misinformed. I always thought the Hall of Mirrors had mirrors on both sides causing this sort of infinite mirror illusion, but only one side is mirrors, the other is filled with windows to the gardens. We saw where the King and Queen would eat, sleep, and entertain guests, but I thought the most fascinating part of each room was each painting on the ceiling. Each room was usually named after some Greek/Roman God/Godess and each painting would portray the myth or have some sort of allusion to them, accompanied by some reference to the King or to France. I really found them fascinating, just expect to strain your neck.

One thing that was interesting, but I’m not sure if it fit so well, was that they tried to incorporate some modern pieces of artwork into the Château. There was actually these two giant high heeled shoes made out of pots and pans you’d find in the kitchen, which was obviously sending a message: that women should wear high heels when cooking (totally kidding). That was really cool, I just don’t know if that really fit into the whole French history of monarchy very well.

The inside of the Château is all well and good, but the Gardens of the Château are really marvelous, which sucks because you have no energy after going through a museum for two hours and to walk through all of the grounds. I got completely separated from our group (since everyone has different paces that they go through a museum) so I decided to head to the Gardens by myself. I started off at the center fountain that overlooks what is similar to the reflecting pool for the Washington Monument except it extends in four directions instead of one. The gardens are so big that even with the unbelievably huge number of tourists visiting, you can still find yourself completely alone on these passageways.

And then it started to pour.

This rain wasn’t like a light rain. It wasn’t a type of rain that Snoop Dogg would describe it as (a drizzle, mah nizzle). This was like rain that Noah’s Ark found unexpected. So I got caught in the middle of that and ran to the nearest tree and held onto my umbrella for dear life. I actually filmed the rain, and will post it eventually (so…August) and its literally just me bursting into laughter as this water is just coming down. Very entertaining.

Other than that, I definitely am going to try and visit the Gardens again, hopefully on a drier day and go visit Marie Antoinette’s lodgings and walk around some more. It’s really unbelievably peaceful and a great getaway from the hustle and bussle of city life (I could write their pamphlet).

After that, I randomly met up with a few people from our group on the train, returned back to the dorms, and did my laundry. Now I don’t like to air my dirty laundry, but it has to get dry somehow (bad pun). Apparently the French use ridiculously hot water for their clothing, because the coldest preset setting for the washing machines was 30 degrees Celsius which is almost 90 degrees Fahrenheit. Thankfully somewhere there looked at me strangely and told me I could change the setting to colder water. Thanks to them my clothes still fit me and not Peter Dinklage.

Up Next: Montmartre and Sacré Cœur.