Before you begin, don’t forget to read the first three parts to this blog series starting with Part 1.
On our final day in Paris, we had a 6:30am wake up call for our trip to the palace of Versailles. We headed to the boulangerie for a pastry to hold us over on the train ride and headed out. With just one ticket each, we were able to get all the way to Versaille from the apartment via just one line switch. We got off the train and walked to hotel Ibis where they offer a nine euro breakfast buffet that’s highly recommended by Rick Steve’s in his travel books. To be frank, it looked terrible so we ended up heading elsewhere and got a brunch combo that included two filling sandwiches a cafe and side of fruit for just five euro. After filling out bellies, we walked to the gates of Versailles and arrived with about ten minutes to wait until opening. At nine am We were quickly ushered in through security and told that our small tripod was “strictly forbidden” and we would have to check it. We didn’t.
Our tour of palace included many rooms and sights spanning from gold encrusted ceilings, beautiful works of art made specifically for the king and the bedrooms where King Louis and Marie Antoinette slept. After about an hour and half in we really started to drag, we took a quick break sitting in a hallway discussing the monarchy and history of the royal successors that called Versailles home. We also talked about how miserably our bodies felt and how 6 days of walking around Paris was just a bit too much. When we mustered up the strength to finish our tour, we walked down the stairs and saw the exit! We were just steps away from the end of the tour without realizing it… Now we felt like total morons! We peered in the gift shop but didn’t see anything that our hearts couldn’t live without (or that would be allowed on the plane, hello steel letter opener and replica revolver!)
We hopped the train back to Paris, but by now neither of us were feeling great, our bodies ached and we were pretty sure we were going to freeze to death. But we decided to try one last time to make it to the top of Notre Dame, this would be attempt number three. We arrived at the Saint Michael metro stop and headed into the line. The time was 1:17. Two very cold hours later we were in! We climbed the first set of spiral stairs and made it to the center lookout point. Here we took some awesome shots of the gargoyles overlooking the city skyline. Wisely, they have steel cables restraining anything from falling over the ledge, but Tony slid the small tripod and camera through, then linked them onto the cables and himself for safety. Our palms were sweating it, but the shots were worth a few minutes of nerves. Next we ascended the remaining staircase that took us to the very top of the tower and were pleased by the panoramic view from 400 steps above the city. It became extremely windy during our time up there and then suddenly we were pelted with rain! The museum worker asked us all to go back down due to the Gail force winds, but we had just enough time for a few shots.
After our tour of Notre Dame, we went to a cafe across the street to wait out the rain. From here, we went to the other side of the Seine and got some shots of a man playing the accordion. We recorded audio of him to use in our time-lapse video and then took some shots of the sunset. We grabbed a warm waffle from a vendor on the street and them were off to catch the metro back home. We kind of took a round about way back so that we could see the Eiffel Tower one more time. It is the creme de la creme of Paris after all!
We did it! We made it to the fourth and final installment of the Paris travel blog series! I hope you have enjoyed reading about my adventures (sometimes misadventures) and seeing the images that we captured during our week long stay in the city of lights. I’ve already booked my next vacation and can’t wait to capture some more beautiful images around Europe! Next up is Barcelona, Spain!
//Lyndsay.
