Day 5: Tuesday 1 April 2014

Firstly, dear gentle reader, unless I see some turnips or carrots humorously shaped like a part of the human anatomy there will not be any photos of food or meals on this blog.

 The weather has been fantastic, 21 degrees & sunny, (I am pleased that I bought hats, gloves and longjohns with me) although coolish in the morning.  I was out and about early this morning as I had booked a bus tour to the Palace of Versailles that left at 8.15am.  I caught the metro from Odeon station near the hotel to the tour office and jumped on the bus, we arrived at Versailles at about 9.30.  The last time I was at Versailles was in 1986 when I was on the Kon Tiki trip, they haven't done much to the place since then.

The palace is certainly magnificent, every room with gold leaf, art works and painted ceilings & I don't mean painted in duck egg blue.  However the experience was detracted a bit by the huge crowds of people in the place.  Very difficult to take it all in and enjoy it.  I did visit the Hall of Mirrors, this was where the peace treaty was signed in 1919 that formally ended TGW.



Palace of Versailles and people waiting to get in!

Caught the bus back into Paris and had lunch in the park near the Louvre.  As this appeared to be a good day for the two K's (kouth and culture) I decided to visit the Louvre.  As I walked towards the big glass pyramid that is the entrance to the Louvre I realized that there were no crowds there.  Beauty, I thought, they must still all be out at Versailles, and I rushed to the entrance.  Guess what, the place is closed on a Tuesday, must be the day they dust the paintings or something.

Lunch in the Park

I decided to take a leisurely stroll back to the hotel via the footbridge across the Seine and through the backstreets of the St Germaine.  The bridge I crossed is one of the bridges in Paris where couples write their name on a padlock and lock it to the bridge therefore declaring their eternal love, or lust, for each other.  There must be literally hundreds of thousands of these locks on the bridge.  As usual in Paris where tourist gather you get the usual collection of buskers, huksters and gypsies.  A gypsy guy tried the old 'look I found your gold ring on the ground' trick on me.  Although he didn't speak any English he certainly got the drift of what I said to him and went to try his trick on somebody else.

Bridge on the river Seine (avec padlocks)

I found a bar with happy hour and settled in for a couple of St Omer's, a local beer.

Dinner tonight was at a bistro on the Bvd St Germaine.