Versaille

On Wednesday, October 10th we took another day trip - this time to Versaille.  It was a quick 30 minute train ride out of Paris.  The palace itself is located in central Versaille but it seems like another world away.  The palace, again, was crazy crowded.  It was incredibly interesting to see the State Apartments but it felt a little like being herded along through small passageways.  Once we got out of the palace, we spent hours in the gardens.  They were gorgeous, even though most of the flowers had faded and many of the fountains were drained.

The ceiling inside the chateau of Versaille:

 The Hall of Mirrors:

 One of the paths in the gardens:

This is a farmhouse the Marie Antoinette used to come to when she wanted to escape from life at court.  This may have been our favorite area of Versaille, partly because we had to walk a long way to get here and it wasn't very crowded.  It was full of cute little buildings like this - almost like a little French village set away from the tourists.

 You can see it was overcast and drizzly this day as well.  You can kind of see behind us how vast the gardens at Versaille really are:

We spent about six hours at Versaille.  We had dinner in Paris at a little place attached to a great little chocolate shop - Un Dimanche de Paris (which, translated, means A Sunday in Paris).  The food was really good - French cuisine, again - and we had a nice evening.  We walked around Paris a bit after dinner and took a few more nighttime pictures of Notre Dame:

We had to rest up because the next day was our 15th Wedding Anniversary and Jay's long awaited dinner at Guy Savoy, plus a big surprise for me.