Back in Paris, and Versailles too!
Colmar to Strasbourg to Paris
19.09.2024
We spent our last few days in Colmar simply chilling out and just kind of lazing around. I think we needed a bit of a rest as we will be finishing up strong at the end of our trip with a return to Paris. Colmar turned into a sleeping little town as well with many shops closed on Sunday. That’s OK with us, we’re turning into temporary locals.
Here’s a couple of foodie pics.
First off, for lunch Beth had burrata cheese and tomatoes, and I had a tart flambee (aka thin-crust pizza). There was some sharing involved.
Walking around a bit I’ll leave you with a few more shots of the town.
Like I said, we just lazed around and then soon it was time for dinner. Getting a bit tired of the same old German/French blend of choices, look what we went for. It was excellent too!
When we had previously walked around the Petite Venice area we noticed that on the bridge there were many heart-shaped padlocks locked to the railings. And, as it was our anniversary, we thought why not add a lock of our own? So we found out where to buy one (nearby souvenir shop) and off we went.
So time to get on the road. We had to check out of our pad by 11:00 am, but out train to Strasbourg (followed by a high-speed train to Paris) wasn’t scheduled to leave until 2:30. So, what to do in between? We decided to head to the train station and see if we could get to Strasbourg early and maybe explore that town for a few hours. The lady at the ticket window said, sure - no prob. So we zipped the 30 minutes to Gare du Strasbourg, locked our luggage up at the station, and headed out to explore.
There is a massive cathedral there that has somehow managed to survive all kinds of wars still fully intact. Quite impressive but it was very hard to get a good shot of it from a distance.
And some sites around the town.
Our 3 hour window zipped by pretty quickly and so we hoofed it back to the train station and soon were settled in for our 2 hour ride to Paris.
And best of all, we will be meeting up with our good friends Rob and Maggie. They just arrived in Paris as well and are starting their month-long adventure here before heading to the UK and Ireland. We are going to spend a few days with them having fun and seeing some sights. We started off by checking out our new neighbourhood and having a bite.
Here’s Beth and Maggie goofing around. Not sure where that bra came from!
The next morning Beth and I had tickets for Versailles. Rob and Maggie were planning to get acquainted with Paris for their first day, so we parted after breaky.
It was a bit of a challenging day for us. First of all, I did not schedule in Beth’s morning coffee fix early enough. My precision planning had us leave our hotel for the Metro and head towards one of the big train stations. I thought no prob, we’ll just grab a coffee there. Turns out there’s a big reno going on at the station and all we could find was a crappy little take-out place, not our usual cafe lattes and croissants start to the day. Oh-oh.
Next was a bit of a train platform fiasco. Our train to Versailles was shown to be leaving on Platform 2. OK so far so good. About 2 minutes before it was to arrive an announcement came over the speakers saying the train to Versailles will be on the “short train” platform. What the heck is that? And why doesn’t it show on the board? Just then a train came in on Platform 4. Hmmm….. is that it? I thought well, let’s just see what the locals do. Well guess what, there ain’t no locals going to Versailles, just confused tourists. Looked like most went onto that train but I was still a bit confused over that. So I asked a guy who was sitting near the door on the train. Versailles? He replied with an incomprehensible one word reply. So I asked again, Versailles? Got the same response. Geez, throw me a fricken bone here, can you nod a yes or no? Well, then the doors closed so that was that. Beth and I were still on the platform. Train gone. Turns out the “short train” platform is not #2 where the screen showed, but #4. Well then just say that!!!!
Anyway, yup, it seems that was our train.Oh well, another one schedule to come in about 15 minutes.
I watched the board like a hawk. It said Platform 4. OK sounds good.
Well guess what , it switched to Platform 2 at the last minute again! Not fooling me this time Paris train people! We boarded that one as soon as the doors opened. Finally on our way, albeit a bit late. We were not going to make the 10:00 time slot though, I was sweating a bit about that.
After 35 minuted or so we disembarked, along with the tourist hordes, and walked the 15 minutes to the chateau. There was a HUGE lineup to enter. I thought that if they gave us any grief about not being on time I would either say we were stuck in this line-up from hell, or regale them with my train platform fiasco. You know, the one I just bored you senseless with. Turned out I don’t think they care, scanned out ticket and entered we did.
We had a downloaded walking tour on our phones, so we plugged in the wireless earbuds and joined in with the throngs of tourists.
Man, it was so crowded. It made the tour through the chateau very challenging. First off, the place is extremely opulent. The rooms are heavily done with with baroque extravagance. Add that to being shuffled along through room by room it eventually got to bit a bit too much.
I did manage to capture these shots though.
And the very famous hall of mirrors. Quite something in its day.
We kept getting glimpses of the gardens outside through the windows and both thought, let’s go from here to there like right now.
They are truly immense. We had watched lots of TV shows and YouTube videos about the Versailles gardens, but to see this area in person is quite something.
We were surprised when we realized we had already been there for 3 1/2 hours. The tickets I purchased included a ride around part of the site on a rickety Choo-Choo train (on wheels over bumpy old cobblestone roads). It was a pleasant break.
By the grace of god it dropped us off back at the chateau. On our little train ride around we noticed other people had rented golf carts to explore the site. Now that is a genius idea. If any of you plan to come visit here, I highly recommend you do that.
Some last few shots of Versailles.
Feeling pretty pooped we headed for the train station to make our way back to our Paris hotel.
We’ll be catching up with Rob and Maggie to trade stories and head out for dinner. More to come on our last day in Paris tomorrow.
Posted by Ross Walker 11:54 Archived in France
Ross, you have captured our day once again. You are brilliant I want to emphasize if asked, I would not recommend folks going to this overcrowded, underwhelming, location, a.k.a. tourist trap. For me the, volume of people Individuals and groups made this experience, intolerable.
by Beth