Europe, Day III

Today the plan was to see Versailles so we first had to stop at Gare du Nord and rent a car to make the forty minute drive outside Paris.

A funny thing happened on the way to Eurocar™ offices: toward the end of our metro ride, a man leaned against Dad rather heavily in a motion suggesting he was trying to get out at his stop, but he wasn’t and he didn’t. As he leaned, Wistar looked down and spotted the fellow’s hand halfway down Dad’s pocket toward his wallet. Clueless as ever, I suddenly saw Wistar shoving the guy and screaming “Excuse moi!” and though I didn’t understand what the pickpocketer said in French, I’m pretty sure there was some speculation about her morality. I snapped out of it and asked what the hell was going on. Dad warned we had to be sure we were making an accurate accusation. Not really knowing, Wistar apologized to the man under the assumption that it could’ve been Dad’s hand. Only after we got off the metro did Dad say conclusively that indeed it wasn’t his hand. So the guy got a misguided apology, but at least he got no traveler’s checks

The drive out of Paris was no picnic. Wistar did a great job helping read and translate the map but there was no way to prepare for the swarms of motorcycles, bikes, myopic pedestrians, pigeons and other travelers that slipped around us here and there, evading the side and rearview mirrosr. I hadn’t seen Dad so apoplectic since navigating DC and Boston when we were kids. With great skill, though, he got us on the road to Versailles. It was on the highway we first noticed that France did not hold a candle to Germany in its signage. That goes double for French airports.

We parked our car by the town square at Versailles which was clean and quaint. After a quick lunch we walked across the street to the massive gated entrance of the Versailles estate. I can’t imagine what this place is like in the height of tourist season. It’s bustling, there’s tons to see and you can’t get a decent photograph without fifteen dudes in fannypacks tainting your shot. Luckily, I’d imagine it was only half as tourist-dense as it is in the summertime. We opted not to tour the inside and went straight through the arches to the back estate. It’s impossible to describe in full, so I’ll link to some pictures later. If you take away the humans and the scaffolding around the section that wasn’t done being renovated, it would be considerably more inspiring, but regardless I was really knocked out by the details, the choice of design elements, the landscaping, the overall insane grandeur, everything.

Throngs of Japanese tourists photographed each little wrinkle of detail in the architecture. I mention they were Japanese because as Wistar said, “The Japanese really get out”, meaning, they don’t mess around when it’s time to travel, and true to form they take detailed photographs of everything. In any case it got me to wondering what happened in the days before digital cameras. Somewhere in Japan are there enormous storehouses to hold all the processed film snapped by Japanese tourists in the last fifty years? Where does it all go? In Japanese households are there libraries of picture albums on every shelf? I was born there, too young to remember. If I ever make it back I’m going to ask around.

Anyway, behind Versailles, down the steps, past the statues and orange juice vendors and around the lake we found a rental service for bicycles. We each got one and cruised around freely down some trails. Soon we headed for Marie Antoinette’s back estate. Apparently when she was young, her parents had builders construct a tiny peasant village of her own because the concept was so strange and romantic for her. A cluster of tiny houses, a stream running through, a little bridge where carp waited to be fed. Wistar was in love with sweet it felt, like a life-size dollhouse. We also found an artifical rock quarry and swimming hole they’d used.

Once the repetitive opulence-or-the-sake-of-opulence really began in vain to feel like it flew in the face of impoverished people all over the world who could feed entire villages with once piece of gold from Louis XIV’s bedside table, I was ready to go back to our small apartment in the red light district.

Once there, Wistar and I split off for dinner, heading down the explore the Latin Quarter. We found a street, more like an alley, loaded down with restaurants of every nationality, and outside each one was a restauranteur badgering you to please try his place because it was the cheapest and best in town. Up and down we walked. Vietnamese, Greek, New French, Old French, Italian, Ethiopian. We got so hungry we just sort of gave up and walked in the direction of the Greek place where the waiter led us quickly inside. We got halfway down the aisle to be seated before another waiter blindsided us from an angle and physically pushed us into a corner to a dirty table which he hurriedly cleaned with a washrag while using his other arm to barricade us in his eating station. The other waiter turned around to see what was going on. “Ahh!” he yelled. He steamed over to the other station where we stood and got right in the face of the other waiter. In a span of no more than five seconds, the yelling deteriorated into an actual slapfight, no kidding. We couldn’t believe what we were seeing. The group of us had suddenly drawn the attention of everyone else in the restaurant. In the confusion, Wistar dragged me out of there, but if she hadn’t I would’ve stood there dumbly waiting to be seated.

So instead we walked down the alley to the Vietnamese place where a mild-mannered waiter smiled and nodded and said, “We have nice fish special”. His humble approach won us over; the meal was excellent.

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