Versailles & Moulin Rouge

Sunday was Versailles day.
To be honest, it started out pretty miserable. We got off the RER only to find that we bought the wrong type of billet (ticket). Ethan put on his charm and we got away with only paying 6e's to get off the train instead of getting fined the 20e the other tourists were having to pay. Whew. This is yet another perk of being married to a poker player!

We walked about 2 blocks to the Versailles entrance where we stood in the longest line ever! (This was when we realized we should have taken the Versailles website seriously when they noted: "Purchase tickets in advance.") After waiting for I don't know how long, we finally paid our admission. This gave us just over 2 hours to look around, not near enough time. Good thing it started to rain! Arg.

We started out through the apartments, saw lots of paintings, really old furniture, huge fireplaces, etc. We made our way to the gardens - the security guard was nice enough to tell us to wait 15 minutes and the admission would be free. Thanks dude!

This was when the day trip started to get better! What a sight the Gardens were! It had stopped raining and since it was late in the day and getting a little cold, there was hardly anyone there! We decided to rent bikes - what a great idea this was! The Gardens is a huge area and there was no way we'd get to see as much if we were on foot. We rode down a dirt road to the Grand Trianon (Again, the late in the day factor and Ethan's smile, got us in free). This was very cool but went through pretty quickly because I didn't want to miss the Petit Trianon, Marie Antoinette's pad. We missed it by a hair - this security guard didn't really care about Ethan's charm.


We had about 20 more minutes with the bikes so we decided just to ride around the Grand Canal real quick. Well 10 minutes into the ride, we found that we hadn't even gone 1/3 of the way - it's a lot bigger than it looked! We turned around and headed back. A romantic bike ride along the Grand Canal ended the day perfectly.


Monday, Moulin Rouge.
This was fun. We got to the Moulin Rouge area pretty early. I wanted to go to some of the stores, Ethan loved it - NOT! He hates the little souvenir shops, I guess I don't blame him. He'll be glad I got that extra postcard 20 years from now! Most of the restaurants didn't open until 7 pm so we decided to have a drink before hand. After one beer, two gin fiz's and Ethan's long island incident, we headed over to the restaurant. Shortly after arriving we decided that we picked the Applebee's of fine dining in this area of Paris. Oh well, the service was good, the food was above average and the wine (as always) was great!

We walked up a couple blocks to the Moulin Rouge and headed in. It was pretty crowded, in fact, really crowded. We sat close to the back of the venue and got our free bottle of champagne. I shortly decided that it was just a headache in a bottle, Ethan didn't let it go to waste. Féerieas was a great show! It was much like a Folies Bergere show but had miniature horses and more fake singing. The costumes were incredible and the dancing/kicking kept my interest for the entire 2 hours! Very entertaining and a worth while experience. I guess you could say we ended our evening with the cancan last night!

Today starts the end of our honeymoon. We're headed into Rouen one last time. We'll have dinner with Antoine and give him back the working GPS he lent to us and head back to Sannois tonight. Tomorrow and Thursday we'll clean and pack up. Ethan might have to carry me to the airport - I have a feeling I'll make it difficult to leave.