Gearing Up – Our Christmas trip is just around the corner

On the 16th Camillo and I will leave Friburgo for Rio, on the 19th we fly to France.   We will spend 3 days in Rome visiting Camillo’s sister and then 7 days in Paris, including Christmas Eve and  day.

 

This is not our first time traveling in France.  There have been multiple times in transit through the Charles de Gaulle, two times with enough of a stopover to take the train into Paris for lunch or dinner. 

 

We also have had two trips where we stayed in Paris once for 4 days and in September of 2006 we took the train, well several trains, and did a two week tour of the northwest corner of France, visiting Versailles, Mont Saint Michel and going up the Loire Valley as far as Amboise.

 

That two week trip into France was before I started posting about our travels and I just went back into the blog to verify – I have never talked about the places we visited, and here we will be making another.  I thought for several days this week I would backtrack and show you some of the photos from 2006.  Then you will be ready to see more of Paris.  Christmas in Paris. 

 

I have loved our trips by train in Europe.  It is becoming more and more necessary though, to be smarter about what we pack and the sizes of our bags.  During the trip in 2006, we found that even though the trains still arrive and depart on schedule and are comfortable and clean, they no longer have porters or even carts to help with the luggage.  By the end of the 2006 trip that became a real problem for us and here we are almost 4 years older.  - Sorry that was a side-track – no pun intended.

 

Versailles: 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We spent only one day and two nights in Versailles. The hotel, within walking distance was okay (can’t remember any disaster so must have been okay) but I do remember that we had trouble finding a good restaurant for dinner…. in France?

We toured the castle and saw a show in the evening that was outside on the grounds. The building’s architecture, Versailles itself, is ‘wondrous.’

I am sure everyone is familiar with the history so I am going to just show some of the photos. I will try and show photos of detail that may not be in publications readily available. Incredible!

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Actually none of the photos, mine nor the pros shows the grander, the size of the HOME of this King and his court – you have to walk through it to understand just how royally the royals lived.  Talk about a big gap between the rich and the poor.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tomorrow Mont Saint Michel -