Heads up...this is a long one.

Well, it’s certainly been a while. We’ve been keeping pretty busy settling in. Two weekends ago, we went to Giverny and Chateau d’Anet on Saturday, and then stayed in Versailles Sunday for the Grandes Eaux. This past weekend we went to two chateaux, Fontainebleau and Vaux-le-Vicomte. Sunday was a day of rest, literally, so I got to spend some time with my family and see an old friend from Furman who came to eat lunch with us. In between all of this has been classes, a visit to the chateau of Versailles, and trying to get to McDonald’s (the classy one, never fear) to use their wireless while conveniently not buying anything.

To back it up a bit…

Giverny – is obviously gorgeous, as you can see if you go to the Picasa page and check out the pictures. It’s Monet’s home, so you can probably see where he got his inspiration from. The entire place is drenched in flowers, and so it’s really pleasing both to the eyes and the nose. Lots of bees, though. So it’s not recommended for those with severe allergies/bee fears. We got to see his garden and pond with the bridge and water-lilies, even though they weren’t blooming when we came through. Monet intended to model his garden after the Japanese styles, but made one notable difference. In Japan, everything that isn’t nature is red, but at Giverny, the bridge is green. We spent the day exploring the house and gardens, and then headed to a wonderful restaurant nearby where we spent a good two hours thoroughly enjoying ourselves.

Chateau d’Anet – a small little chateau (bah –they’re all still humongous on a house scale) where Henri II hid Diane de Poitiers, his mistress. It was actually bought by a family when the country of France put it up for sale, so we also got to see someone’s rather impressive liquor stash in the enormous living room with 300-year-old furniture. But hey, why waste a perfectly good living room, even if a king did hang out there, right? The town itself is big enough to merit public restrooms and actual toilets, but small enough to not merit toilet seats, toilet paper, or soap. That was an adventure. But no worries, I learned my lesson at 15 in France, and I had hand sanitizer on hand (hah!)

Les Grandes Eaux – Given the enormous number of fountains at Versailles (see pictures – I didn’t even scratch the surface of all the fountains there), it’s fairly expensive, time-consuming, and effortful to get the fountains running. So in the interest of efficiency, they are only turned on once a week for six months out of the year. It was really impressive to see, but sadly, we only got to see a little, since they only leave the fountains on for an hour at a time. We then spent the rest of our afternoon eating at a little café/brasserie on the side end of the gardens. It was pretty good, but what in France isn’t? I haven’t really run across bad food yet, nor do I really expect to. Unless I go to London at some point.

Wednesday of last week, we split up the monotony of classes with another Wednesday visit. This particular one took us to the Chateau of Versailles, which we had not yet visited, despite having already been here for two weeks. We grabbed our audio guides and marched off into the maze that is Versailles (and yes, I got the audio guide in French because I felt too guilty when I thought about getting it in English). Versailles is gorgeous, but the visit wears you down a bit, and the whole thing is a little overpowering. I still got a lot of pictures though.

Chateau de Fontainebleau – this is yet another one of those chateaux belonging to the royal family of France for them to play in when they get bored with running the country. I should have taken pictures, but didn’t since it was about 9 in the morning on a Saturday and after a while, chateaux start to all look the same. They have the exact same rooms anyway. Master’s bedroom, mistress’ bedroom, waiting rooms for both, council room, servants’ quarters, etc. The only difference is who lived there. But it’s still really cool. I’m just not sure what I’m going to do in October when we hit 4 chateaux in one day.

Probably drink a lot of wine.

I digress.

Chateau Vaux-le-Vicomte -- this is probably one of my favorites due to the story behind it. The guy who built it, Nicolas Fouquet, was one of the grand financiers of the state of France. Since the monarchy couldn’t run on its own, it essentially borrowed money from people like Fouquet. Well, he decides to build a nice new home called Vaux-le-Vicomte. He even thoughtfully throws in a special room for the king, because he’s such a great guy. So he throws a huge party, invites the king, who comes and proceeds to have a major temper tantrum. Basically, Fouquet’s chateau is better than Versailles was at the time. So the king (one of those Louis’ – XIV) has Fouquet arrested on absurd charges, steals his architect, lets Fouquet rot in prison for the rest of his life, and expands Versailles in the meantime. Lesson learned? Don’t invite the king to a party if your house is better than his. He gets cranky.

The chateau itself is, of course, gorgeous. The entrance is impressive, but the back view is stunning. I took about a dozen pictures just of the back because of how pretty it was. In a way, I liked it better than Versailles. Versailles is designed to be ostentatious, to show off, and to impress foreign monarchs and domestic nobles alike. It has paintings all over every ceiling, fabric covering every inch from the ceiling down, and basically so much art that you feel overwhelmed with patterns and sculptures and everything else. But Vaux-le-Vicomte is much less so. You can see where parts of it clearly influenced the construction of Versailles (since they were both built by the same architect), but VlV actually feels like it could be a home (and it was). I could easily see making it my personal vacation home. Especially with the talking statues.

That’s right. Vaux-le-Vicomte has been overtaken by Disney animators and now history is being reenacted by the same robots used in Pirates of the Caribbean (the ride, not the movie). This is funny, not only because I got to see a stuffed pet squirrel on a robot’s shoulder, but because Emily and I had had a conversation about this kind of thing just 2 hours earlier. We were sitting on a bench, talking about how the chateaux run together, and how it would be much more interesting if people dressed up and reenacted the history for us. And lo and behold, the very next chateau we visit is doing just that, with little speeches playing from the walls as the robots’ heads move woodenly back and forth. It was awesome. We really felt like we were part of history. Or a Disney ride.

Sunday, we had nothing planned for the first time since we had arrived in France. This was really nice, and it was a gorgeous day to have nothing to do. I ended up making lunch for my French family. I had brought them she-crab soup mix and cornbread as part of their hostess gift, so I made that, plus a salad with raspberry vinaigrette, a peach cobbler, and sweet tea to introduce them to the South. To make matters even better, Austin came to lunch. He’s an old Furman classmate (we had maybe one class together) who also had my family when he studied abroad a couple of years ago. Now he works in Paris and comes to have lunch with them on a regular basis. Since he’s from North Carolina, he was the true critic of my Southern lunch, and according to him, I got full marks.  Surprisingly, they really liked our food. Or should I say, they liked our tea. Soup and cornbread I can understand them liking. Salad they have all the time. But tea? Well, in France they prefer for drinks like tea to be hot. And strong. Not cold and sweetened. For instance, they take their afternoon coffee (an espresso) black. It’s really strong. But they actually liked sweet tea. Definitely a surprise. They also wanted to request more cornbread. I tried to explain it was a mix, but I’m not sure I explained it very well.

After lunch, we just sat around talking for about an hour and a half. It was so pretty out that none of us really wanted to move. Later that afternoon, I ended up going to Paris with Emily and Dan just to hang out. We wanted to take advantage of everything being open, but ended up just wandering around and exploring. This weekend was the Journées de Patrimoine in Paris, which basically means they open the political buildings, chateaux, and most monuments for completely free. The only caveat is, it’s free for the rest of Paris too. It ends up being like tax-free weekend – you stay and home and take the tax just so you don’t have to wait in a four hour line to see where President Sarkozy lives. He wasn't even home, since I saw on the news last night he's in NYC for a summit of some kind.

This coming weekend is a free weekend, so no one is sure yet on plans. We won’t go far though, because a couple of students are running in a road race from the Eiffel Tower to the Chateau of Versailles on Sunday. Not me, oh no. I will be cheerfully waving from the sidelines with my brioche in hand. So stay tuned for what might be our first foray out of the country. Or at the very least, our first foray on our own. Even if it’s only to Disneyland Paris.