Adventures while abroad!: Paris Day 1- Versailles

Jenae and I met in Paris at about 11 am on Thursday, I had taken the straight shot train from Frankfurt which was a little less than 4 hours and Jenae was coming from Reims, a town in France where some of her friends from home are studying abroad. We checked our bags at the train station and decided we would make the journey to Versailles for the day to see the estate and palace built by Louis XIV. First, however, we obtained baguettes as we were hungry and thought this would be the most French thing we could do! ;) After taking the metro the wrong direction for about 30 minutes (Jenae has been to Paris before and claimed to be well traveled on the Parisian metro...right...) we finally got ourselves turned around and arrived at Versailles. The palace was stunning. It is amazing how much Louis XIV built for himself, all whilest the people of France were starving and dying. The rooms were very lavish and the corridors and rooms were ornately decorated with parquet floors, marble panels on the walls, rich colors on the walls, tons of painting, and detailed baroque tapestries draped throughout. But the most impressive part of Versailles was the outside gardens, which were the epitome of pristine. The shrubs were all shaped into conical or spherical fun and it was nice to walk outside as it was not very cold and sunny (which is far different than the blanket of rain that consumes Darmstadt...it has honestly rained at least a little bit everyday for the last 3 weeks I think...as I write this it is pouring!) We took a lot of fun pictures at Versailles because we were bored with just landscape pics or just the pic of the two of us holding the camera ourselves, so prepare yourself to see a lot of pictures of us jumping and laughing!