Jour libre!

Today is a French holiday, instead of going to school we went to Versailles instead. From what I remember, today is the end of some war or fight that occured against or with the US involved, so I'm thinking that's a good thing. That way I can be here without worrying about angry anti-American mobs and such! Phew...

Anyway, we got up later than normal today, which was very nice, got ready, ate breakfast and left a little after 8:45 to catch our metro. We had one stop to travel before we caught the train. It was only about 9:00 when the train pulled up by the platform we were at. We had no idea how to tell if it was what we wanted, since our plan was to catch a later train, but we got on anyway and started following along stops on our route until we reached Versailles, the stop for the castle. We got off and wandered behind a big crowd until we found the castle. Being over an hour early (reservation @ 10:30), we didn't want to wait at the gate, so where did we go??? Starbucks of course!!!! In case you didn't knoz, Melissa and I are pretty much always the first to show up anywhere on this trip...by usually at least 20ish minutes lol =P. Anyway, we met up with others at Starbucks a little while later, finished our coffees and met up with the guide and rest of the group just inside the castle gates.

Versaille Castle is HUGE!! There are 700 rooms and over 2000 windows. There are tons of pictures all over the ceilings, and of course we got to look at different rooms that the kings and queens used. I even found the caduceus ( two-snake staff of Asclepius, symbolizing medicine) in the corner of the ceiling and in one of the paitings. Thank you Amanda Gahler for getting me a non blurry picture! AFter viewing the castle, we went outside to view the extensive land and garden, maze-like things. It was kind of chilly today, but the sun did come out so that Melissa bought some interesting but yummy Italien ice cream. We have some pictures of flowers, giant ice cream cones, landscaping and of course the time when they turn all the fountains on. Very cool.

This weekend Melissa and I have the apt to ourselves, so it's kind of nice to have the stress of no class, not a ton of French or the structure of stuff. We can just explore and relax. We ate dinner and watched two episodes of bones and actually have gotten to be on the computer, since the kids aren't here. We pretty much just use it at school now.

C'est tout pour maintenant. We are doing a bunch of exploring and seeing of things since this is our free weekend, so we'll probably head to bed soon!!

Bon nuit!
Jen