Back to Paris

I am continuing with my trip to Paris and visit to the Louis XIV exhibition last October. The anniversary of the execution of Queen Marie Antoinette is in October, and so it was that I traveled to France to see the opening week of the Louis XIV The Man and the King exhibition along with a personal display of modern sculpture that was carefully positioned on the grounds of the Versailles.

On Thursday, I toured the interior apartments of the Chateau, as I had managed to book a hotel that was near a shopping center in LeChesnay, a suburb which lies directly north of the town of Versailles and the Chateau. A train also goes to the Versailles area from Paris and so I made connections from Paris on the train.

Believe me, traveling on the train in Paris is quite an experience, one that I probably should try to remember how to board and depart as one uses tickets to get one's self in and out of the gates. It is a problem for newcomers who do not know how to use these entries and exits. I had to crawl under a gate once when I did not know how to use my ticket properly and the guards kindly looked away and did not question me or stop me.

You see, before that, at a different gate, I had had no difficulty at all as I just walked through. Had I used that gate instead of the other one, a different exit by the way, I would have been able to just walk through I suppose. I was very embarrassed but since it was so early in the morning, and I was basically alone, I did the only thing I could do and that was to crawl under to get out. Ooh, la, la.

I also just reminded myself that I have a book of tickets yet to use whenever I go back for the subway. I wonder if they will be any good by the time I return.

Well, anyway, first times are always problems, but I wanted to see both Paris and the Chateau du Versailles, but the Chateau was my priority.

All this French stuff becomes very confusing after awhile with me. When I was in California teaching, I had been often called Marie Antoinette by a few choice friends, and I never knew if that was flattery or contempt! I still do not know for sure, when I think about it, but one of those same friends did lend me a book to read called Confessions of a Queen by Victoria Holt. I read it and felt very sorry for her by the end of the book. When she was deprived of her children, it touched me very deeply.

To be honest, before I read the book, I had not really liked her at all, as my only knowledge of her was minimal, and probably due to Tale of Two Cities in which the revolutionaries are painted in a better light than the Royal Family had been, and Antoinette always takes the brunt of the criticism.

So when I was asked at the desk if my trip included Antoinette, I said yes, as I have always been interested in her life despite knowing little about her. So I was placed in a room with a portrait of Madame duBarry, who is King Louis XV's last and probably most controversial mistress. She was considered the most beautiful woman in France, and if she is anything like the portrait of her, she is a ravishingly beautiful woman.

But in the lobby there was a magazine about the exhibition. I wish I would have taken it, but I didn't, being a good girl, wonder why now, because when I went back to see it again, it was already gone.

I took with me my pentax camera and my flipcamcorder to film anything that I could and I did get some good videos at both the Chateau and the Louvre.

continued next post