Another great day today. It was absolutely freezing but Heena and I braved the cold and went out to Versailles, about 40 minutes by train from Paris. We had the same New Paris tourguide as I did from yesterday’s free tour (Alex) and it cost 28 euro (including transportation!). It was a great deal and I highly encourage anyone who goes to Europe to look into the New Europe tours since they have free and discounted tours of the highlights of almost every major city. Anyway, we got to Versailles and it was absolutely mindboggling…the size, the decadance, and just the excess was so much to absorb. We headed straight to the gardens, where we began a three hour tour that took us all throughout the gardens and gave us the history of Versailles up until the Revolution and a little after. The tour was really informative and useful in that if I would’ve I would’ve breezed through everything on my own without realizing any of its significance. And since the gardens revolve around Greek mythology, Alex stopped at many of them and gave us the brief story (Persephone, Ceres, Enceladus, Apollo, just to name a few, there were tons more) which was a really helpful refresher. The L’Orangerie was definitely my favorite garden and I’ll let the pictures explain for themselves. We also learned a lot about the various scandals that took place here, including ”The Affair of the Diamond Necklace”, and the various historical events that have shaped our present day, such as the unification of Germany (which essentially took place in the Hall of Mirrors), the signing of the Treaty of Paris, ending the War of American Independence, and the Treaty of Versailles, ending WWI and starting WWII (for the most part). After the garden tour, Heena and I went inside the actual palace which is now a museum. Since we’re students in an EU country, we got in for free, which was pleasantly surprising since we thought we had to put down another 13 euro. The inside was just extravagent. I loved the artwork but the excessiveness was definitely not as appealing. Every room was covered in paintings, of various Greek gods and goddesses, and gilded in gold. What was interesting was that the King’s bedroom was the only room not to have any ceiling paintings. The Hall of Mirrors was spectacular. After witnessing all of this, I completely understand why the French Revolution took place. Studying history and reading about the extravagence and excess is one thing but actually seeing it is another.

We’re back in the city now, absolutely exhausted and still freezing. Tomorrow is my last full day here (such a regret that I didn’t stay longer) and I’m planning to actually go into the Eiffel Tower, tour the Mosquee de Paris, check out the Musee d’Orsay, and tour Montmarte and Pigalle. Hopefully I get to do all this since I have no idea when I’ll be back. Then on Monday I’m taking a train to Brussels!