Thursday: We Begin With a Royal Failure

We left the hotel at 9:00 and headed out in search of breakfast and Versailles. We were more successful with the breakfast. We got to Versailles around 11:00, and I was surprised to find out that about 10,000 other people had woken up with the same idea of what to do with their day as we did. Which makes the parking situation slightly tricky.

I dropped everyone off close to the palace and followed signs to one of the many parking lots that seemed to be near. In order to find a parking lot, I was introduced with my first “pit of despair” style parking structure. Instead of going up, up, up you have to go down, down, down. I was on level “-4”. These parking lots are tricky to find, because when you see that there’s a parking lot that holds hundreds of cars just around the corner, you are surprised when you don’t see anything but a tunnel going down.

I was glad I had done some research on parking before I went and knew that most parking lots have a height limit of 1.9 meters. My van is somewhere around 1.89 meters. Or at least at feels that way as I drive under the barriers with what feels like only an inch to spare. I visibly wince every time I hear my antenna scrape against the ceiling (and the antenna isn’t that tall). I drive through the structure physically hunched over, as if my car will somehow be shorter if I do that. I was so stressed after finally getting parked I thought I was going to cry.

But instead, I went to meet everyone at the Palace to find out that the fun was only beginning. The line to get into see the palace was somewhere around 1 hour and 30 minute wait time (about 1 hour and 25 minutes outside of our range). So as much as I would have like to have seen the inside, we opted to try for the “petit train” that takes you around the gardens, and walked back behind the palace.

At the “petit train”, we found another waiting line. As much as I also would have liked to have seen the gardens, the idea of paying $50 to try to keep Andrew and Chloe interested in flower beds for an hour just didn’t seem worth it. I’m sure the novelty of the train would have worn off relatively quickly and they would have figured out it was just like a car (which they have been riding in A LOT). So it was a royal failure all around.

We managed to get the car out of the pit of despair with no visible damage (just emotional damage), and headed to Paris. Using the internet, I had carefully selected a grocery store with an underground parking lot that was close to a metro. It turns out that the entire grocery store AND parking lot are basically underground, which made it very confusing. There is a car wash, gas station, grocery store, and parking lot all underground--it was a new one for me. If it weren’t for the sign poking out from the top you’d hardly know it was there.

This parking lot involved even more antenna scraping and wincing, but we found a spot and headed to the metro. There was a little more confusion than I would have liked with getting us to the right station and buying the right tickets, but eventually we got on the right train to take us to the Trocadero station, close to the Eiffel Tower.

Once we came out of the station and around a building, the whole vista of the Eiffel Tower opened up. It completely erased the failure of the morning. It is pretty spectacular.

We knew ahead of time that 2 of the 3 elevators weren’t working, and the wait time was 2 hours. NOT GOING TO HAPPEN. But I also knew that you could take the stairs, so that’s what we did. It was a lot cheaper, and not too bad of a hike up to the 1st level. We would have gone to the second, but we ran out of: 1) time, and 2) courage (specifically Andrew and Katie). The structure is very open, so you are extremely aware of just how high you are. And that did not work to our advantage. No amount of ice cream would get them up another flight of stair.

So back to the metro we went, and then to the car, and into Paris rush hour traffic. We are now we are about an hour outside of Paris at another “camping house” as Andrew calls them. As much as I LOVED the abbey, when it comes to keeping kids happy, we are so much better off here. It’s a huge sight with pools, ponds, playgrounds, and some cool activities for the older kids like rappelling, zip lines, trapeze, and archery. So we will take the day off tomorrow to just "relax" (do I really get to relax? I doubt it) and use the park, and head back to Paris on Saturday.

I hope you like this photo. It took me almost a half hour to get in onto the blog while sitting in the "bar". I love our new place that we're staying, but I do not like their wifi :(