Food beats Art everytime

The next day my mother showed up again promptly at 8 o clock am and we made our way over to the Arc de Triomph. Unfortunately, it didn’t open until 10 am. We waited in the line that was quickly forming to find out at ten that again, our Paris Museum Pass let us skip the queue. The arc was much more impressive than I would have thought it was, considering how some of the other monuments had been slightly disappointing. After climbing to the top and taking some amazing pictures of the city,

  we made our way to the Eiffel Tower.

It lived up to everything I could have ever imagined, but after waiting in line for an hour and a half (the Paris Museum Pass does nothing here) the glory of it all was starting to wear off. The weather had picked up from being slightly overcast to a nice misty rain. We finally had made it to the front of the line when a sign was put up in the window: Due to weather conditions the top of the tower will be closed. Only entry to the second floor. I couldn’t say I was too disappointed since I was terrified to go up, but Alex sure was. We went to the second floor which was high enough for me and went out for lunch.

Then it was my brother’s turn to choose what we wanted to do. The entire rest of the day was wasted spent at the army museum and finding Jim Morrison’s grave. I guess it was cool to see Napoleons’ tomb and I do love The Doors, but I didn’t feel that this should have won over the aquarium.

The next day my mother and brother were leaving to go to Normady while we spent two more days in Paris. We had all planned to drive out to Versailles and Alex and I would take the bus back to the city. My mother soon decided that she would just wait in the car and Karl could come with us to the Chateau and run through it in an hour or two. We went through the gates and discovered the wonderful line that had formed while we had driven out of the city. There was no way Karl was going to get in in an hour or two. He wasn’t too disappointed, and we walked around the gardens for a while before they took off. Alex and I then joined the almost twice as long mid-day line. The line full of screaming children who won’t get up early enough, old people who refuse to, and everyone else who isn’t ambitious about what they’re doing. And though our Paris Museum Pass also included all of Versailles, it didn’t let you skip the queue, so we were here to stay. An hour and a half later we had made it to the castle, and picked the first area of rooms that we could find. We blew through it pretty fast realizing it was the section that didn’t contain all of King Louis’ rooms and the hall of mirrors, and we ended up back at the front of the Chateau. We tried going up a set of stair and we soon were stopped by security for trying to enter an exit. We then argued our way through a turnstile where we realized we had left the entire part we just waited in line for. We begged the men at the turnstile to let us back in, explained it was a simple mistake, but our arguments were greatly defeated when everyone behind us had done the same thing. Maybe Versailles should sell a painting and invest in some signs in English. We walked around the corner to get back in the line and found it twice as big. I told Alex we should just go home, I couldn’t do that stupid line again. But we decided that we were here and should make a new plan. We found a helpful girl and told her our situation, hoping out of sympathy she would let us into the palace. She was sympathetic but unable to do anything. She suggested we walk around the grounds and go to Marie Antionette’s estate and return in a few hours or so and the line should be shorter.

It was until we left the made part of the palace grounds that we discovered just how large Versailles is. It's at least an hour to walk a straight line to Marie Antoinette’s pad, another two hours to look at all the buildings, and a gruesome 30 minutes till we decided to pay the money to hop on the trolly. It was about this part of the trip when we found being cheap wasn’t always the best option.

When we made it back to the palace entrance, the lines were gone! We sped through security, found the main rooms, and quickly made our way through the rooms and the Hall of Mirrors. It was impressive but running on low energy all the real beauty of it escapes you.

We hopped on a train and were back at our hotel that afternoon. And tonight was the night we decided to have a fancy French dinner.

We wanted to go back to the square where the Moulin Rogue was. There we so many nice restaurants, it was full of people and music, and though we knew it would be expensive, that was the point. We ate at Café de Luna, and got all things classic French (or what we American’s perceive to be French). Escargot and French Onion Soup appetizer, Goose and Steak with Beranaise sauce, and chocolate cake and crème brulee for dessert. It was delicious and worth the 120 dollars we spent on it all, and it was our favorite experience in the city. So yes, food beats art, everytime.