versailles, minus the gardens

i keep forgetting to mention my quick foray into american apparel here in paris. i know, for shame! apparently, american fashion is all the rage here, and i wanted to check out the french approach to these new fads. every time i see "abercrombie" or "gap" on someone's sweatshirt i immediately assume "oh my god, another american tourist" but that's really not the case! every other parisian has this sweatshirt:


sorry, erinrose. and when i was in AA, there was a gang of 10 and 11-yr old boys all dying to buy the green version of the above sweatshirt. bizarre!

we went to versailles yesterday. the weather was absolutely miserable - cold, rainy, and extremely windy. we brought a fromage, baguette, and pear picnic, and had to eat it under an ugly overhang where construction is being done on the front facade of versaille's central chateau. i'd like to return to versailles when we'll actually be able to see the gardens and enjoy the weather. thanks to our institute ID cards, which claim that we are art history students, we get in free to the chateau! we took a tour using an audio guide, which had some great trivia. for instance, 19 royal children were birthed in the queen's chambers at versailles. also, the queen was always forced to give birth in PUBLIC, in order to make absolutely certain that the child was indeed the proper heir to the throne. can you imagine? how embarassing!


hall of mirrors.

not only was the weather gross, but we got on the wrong train to versailles. it was headed in the correct direction, but forked a different way. so, we spent an extra hour trying to figure out the extremely complicated "RER" train system. each train has a different name; sara, elba, etc. our train was named vick. the only image that came to my mind was that of a new jersey mobster. however, our vick turned out to be clean and spacious, and got us to versailles just fine in the end.



last night we sat outside at a cafe for quite a while. fortunately, on these cold days, cafes have overhangs and intense heat lamps which warm their outdoor customers. it was very pleasant, but these cafes are so expensive, whether they're in a touristy area or not. euro:american dollar = 1:1.5. Outrageous!

After the cafe we found a little bon-bon shop in the street. look at this array:



i just had to get a bag, and the candy was delicious. because the three of us had all decided to buy a bag, the guy selling the bon bons even gave us an extra scoop of chocolates. so nice.