We Made it to Paris!

Well, we finally made it to the end destination of our trip…Paris, France. We left the hotel in Caen in the morning, and headed to the palace at Versailles (see picture above). The palace was amazing. It was a huge building, all adorned with gold and statues. There were a ton of people, more than I have ever seen at a museum before. Also, you had the people that were selling trinkets from Paris, even though we were in Versailles. Actually, the selling of that is illegal. When we were having lunch, we saw them all run away because the cops were coming around. As soon as the cops left, they came back. Before we went into the Palace of Versailles, we walked around the huge gardens. There were a ton a fountains and statues, and it covered a huge area. It was hard to believe that so much space, both in the palace and the garden, had been taken up for one person, the King of France. That was just unbelievable. After spending an hour and a half walking around the gardens, we had lunch. Lunch consisted of pretty good sandwiches and juice. After eating we went inside the palace. Again, there was just a mob of people inside. There was a lot of marble throughout the stairways and hallways, and there was gold in quite a few places. My favorite places to go were the magnificent Mirror Room, which was really large and pretty and the King’s quarters. We were able to se what his bedroom and private dining room looked like. After we finished looking around the palace, we loaded back into the bus.
The drive into Paris was a short one, little more than half an hour. As we went, one of the teachers explained the subway (metro) system to us. He was nice enough to include both an English and Norwegian version of his presentation. Our hotel rooms are suite style rooms, and are really nice. They are about four times the size of the hotel we stayed at in Caen. They are apartments, with a bedroom, living room, bathroom, toilet, and kitchen. They are very nice. At 5:30pm, we all boarded the Metro together and took it to the Eiffel Tower. We stood up and took pictures. In one of the next few days, I am going to go to the top of the Eiffel Tower with some friends. It was neat to see, next to where we were by the Eiffel Tower was a restaurant. Outside that restaurant, they had a Rolls Royce, a Bentley, a Mercedes Benz, a Ferrari, a Land Rover, and two Smart cars. The Smart cars seemed somewhat out of place, but the other cars were cool. After the Eiffel Tower, we walked a little ways to the L’Arc de Triomphe. It was interesting, and we were able to go to the top and get a complete view of the city of Paris. Then, we split up and went to dinner. I was in a large group who went to an Italian restaurant named Bistro Romain. The service was really slow, but the food was good. We left in groups as we finished eating, and I went with Maya and Eda. We had a little trouble finding a Metro station, but were able to get to one thanks to the help of a man who actually spoke English. Then we went back to the hotel. It was rather hot here today, so I wanted to take a shower. After that, I wrote this post. I am now planning on going to bed.