Grandeur
Again I set off alone to navigate the public transportation system in attempts to get myself to the Palace of Versailles. Surprisingly easy to get there, I was greeted in Versailles by the longest winding line I have ever seen. Evidently the advice to buy your ticket online to skip the long waits was false hope. E-ticket in hand, I waited close to an hour in these lines to enter the palace. Luckily, I made a friend in line; a young Colombian woman about my age who was studying French in Paris. She was very kind and I loved getting to know her, but unfortunately, I lost her early on in the Palace. The massive crowds were difficult to navigate and I was constantly being jostled around between peoples’ elbows and protruding bags. It truly stresses me out to admire art in crowded settings, but the grandeur of each room and their elaborate decorations and massive paintings were impossible to ignore. Practically everything was gilded and decorated in the most extravagant manner; it really enveloped each visitor both physically and mentally. It boggled my mind that one would even have the ambition to build such an expansive estate. It is hard to imagine that people actually lived in these rooms on a regular basis. The lavishness of literally every aspect of this estate amazes me. I am not even going to attempt to describe the palace here because it truly is an experience, not simply something to see. I couldn’t just take photographs of these rooms; I had to take videos in order to fully encapsulate each room’s extravagance.
The morning sky was rather glum and dark, but to my luck, the sun came out just when I exited the palace to start on the tour of the gardens. The paths within the gardens are lined with meticulously groomed bushes and tress, some of them wide and grand, some smaller and more intimate with trees that create an arched canopy above. Catching me off guard, I discovered that there are speakers playing opera and classical music form the age of Louis the XIV-XVI. It immediately took me back to the days of performing in operas as a child and singing in choruses, bringing a huge grin to my face. I don’t know if this was the intended effect, but it made for a more immersive experience and prompted me to close my eyes and imagine what it might be like to walk these gardens in the palace’s hay-day, with elegantly dressed royalty, parasols in hand, slowly strolling the pebbled paths. Some fountains in the garden even had “water shows” along with the music! Other fountains were decorated with large conch shells and stones from the ocean, which I was especially drawn to as a sea-lover. Meandering haphazardly through these gardens, ham and cheese sandwich in hand, letting the sunshine wash over me and baroque music fill my ears, was a wonderfully relaxing experience I never imagined myself in.
Upon returning to Paris, I met up with my friend from college who I would be traveling with this weekend. I didn’t think about this much before arriving but it was so nice and reassuring to see someone who I was really familiar with and who knows me well after spending the semester building relationships with new people. We wandered around the neighborhood our hostel was in – Montmatre – for the rest of the evening, which is very beautiful with many small streets lined with tiny houses draped in vines of ivy and wisteria. There are also a lot of lovely café-lined squares by the Sacre-Coeur. Outdoor seating that spills out from every eating establishment epitomizes Europe for me and to see this everywhere I turned in Paris filled my heart with joy. (Again, I don’t know why this makes me so happy, it just does, I really can’t explain.) We ended the evening with a pizza dinner (I had honey and chèvre pizza, which was delicious!) followed by some gelato. To wrap up the day, we decided to take the short walk to see the Moulin Rouge in all its neon-red glory. How nice it was to be exploring a beautiful city with such lovely company!
