Versailles +

Le 13 mai 2009
so Versailles was absolutely incredible! I spent 7 hours there yesterday! I ate in front of the castle and then I spent 2 hours going through, then I walked through the gardens for a couple hours, and then biked through for an hour after that. It was the absolute perfect day.. the weather, oh my. It was indescribable really. After taking art history with Professor Magleby at BYU (which my far was my favorite class thus far) I thought I would go crazy when I got there, with all of the things that I learned flashing back to me. Turns out that the castle wasn't all that cool on the inside.. the hall of mirrors was great but a lot of the other things didn't meet my expectations. PLUS the mirrors in the hall of mirrors are really old and fuzzy so they didn't reflect light all that well.
One of the ceilings in the Versailles Castle (this is impressive!)
Me in the Hall of Mirrors

The garden, oh the garden is where you should spend your time. Biking was absolutely incredible and totally worth the pay.

The "doing the baha" path that I biked down at Versailles (one of the many I should say
Sad thing- the Trianon costs extra so I didn't get to see either of the Trianons.. but I'm planning on going back. Its okay. :) (I go to church like 8 minutes from Versailles)

Baby Swans at Versailles
Versailles from the back of the castle

Before I went to Versailles yesterday I did a walk all through the latin quarter of Paris. The Latin quarter is so cute.. tons of restaurants, tiny little streets, monuments and more. So I was crossing the street towards the statue of Saint Michel. The little green walking man popped up and I looked both ways to make sure traffic had stopped. The closest car to me was a huge tour bus and the bus driver gestured to let me know that it was safe for me to cross. I saw the car next to him had stopped and continued walking just as a moped whizzed between the two cars. My life literally flashed before my eyes. I was mid walking so I was only able to hop back a bit.. the moped guy slammed on his brakes and I tried to move out of his way as much as possible. When all was said and done, I was standing over the wheel of his moped after being given a slight nudge. I feel really really blessed, cause I shouldn't have been walking after crossing that guys path. Cool story though eh? Crazy mopeders. Most French people would have started yelling at him, but I gasped, looked at him in horror and quickly finished crossing the street. Watching all the peoples' eyes in their cars follow me to see how badly hurt I was, was pretty funny.

This is a crazy video of us girls biking. Today my group was Hannah, me (the first 2 in the video), Jamie, then Rachel (a different Rachel) and then Natalie. We were going to be late so we were hurrying back, Hannah runs into a tree at the end. Take note :) Oh but she didn't get hurt, it was just funny haha

Le 14 mai 2009
So the professor is out of town, I guess I forgot to tell you that. He was out of town today and yesterday, hence the long trip to Versailles. He got invited to give a talk at some convention in Belgium on a book he wrote or something.. I forget. Anyways so class was canceled yesterday (we were all told to go to Versailles) and then he left homework that we had to do in the Louvre. Jamie and I might up with our friend Fred at 11:00 and didn't leave till six. My feet get more blistered and callused everyday. Poor feet... The whole time that we were in there, we were doing research, deep discussion, taking pictures, and notes so our heads and feet were exploding by the time that they announced that the Louvre would be closing in 15 minutes. So we didn't mind leaving, plus we had recently finished. The pictures I have from it.. are pretty boring because they are all of small artifacts but I do have a picture of one person from the day!
This is Fred. He likes to stand in Front of the things I like to take pictures of. What a goof.
Oh and tonight I saw my first Paris sunset. I'm not sure how I've missed it every other day.. but today I saw out the metro window coming home.. I'm lucky we got off while it was still there, but I wasn't in a good place to take pictures sadly.
The sunset (sorry about all the nasty surroundings..)