6/2 - Versailles and goodbyes...

Bonjour à tous! This is Juliet, with a report on our final full day in France... 

We had a relaxed morning and breakfast at the hotel, then we met in the lobby around 10:45am to catch the RER (local train) to Versailles, which is a town about 10 miles west of Paris. After we got off the train in Versailles, people were free to split into smaller groups for the short walk through town to the Palace of Versailles.

The land around the palace has been used as royal hunting grounds since the early 1600s, and Louis XIII built a hunting lodge there in 1624. The lodge and grounds remained a royal retreat until the 1660s, when Louis XIV decided to turn it into a grand, royal residence. The palace underwent major expansions from about 1660 to 1715, and Louis XIV made Versailles the headquarters of the government in 1682. Paris was still the capital city, but Versailles served as the center of the kingdom until the French Revolution and the fall of the monarchy in the late 1700s.

There were large crowds as we approached the palace, but the lines moved fairly quickly, and soon we were all inside! People were free to wander through the palace in smaller groups and at their own pace. The palace has 2,300 rooms and is situated on an estate and gardens covering nearly 20,000 acres, so there was plenty to explore!

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We found a replica of the immense painting The Coronation of Napoleon, by the French artist David. He was commissioned to make a copy of the original 1808 painting, which hangs in the Louvre, and he painted it from memory to make the one that is now displayed in Versailles.

We were also impressed by the Gallery of Great Battles, which is an immense room (120 meters long!) with a series of paintings that recount the military successes of France over a period of 15 centuries.

Below you can see some additional photos of Versailles, including the famous Hall of Mirrors, where the treaty of Versailles was signed in June 1919. We learned a lot about French history, art, and culture through our time at Versailles!

After touring the palace, most of our group stuck around a bit longer to walk around the formal gardens or the adjoining park. Maeve, Liesel, and Erin headed back to Paris to do some additional sightseeing, and they were excited to be able to visit Shakespeare and Company, a famous English-language bookstore on the left bank of the Seine. 

When we all got back to Paris, we met at the Auteuil Brasserie for a final group dinner together. We shared a table on the lovely upper terrace and had a relaxed dinner full of plenty of conversation and laughter. We then walked to a nearby square to circle up for one more debriefing conversation as a group. Everyone had the chance to share something they learned about themselves and something they appreciated about each other -- there were lots of smiles and hugs and even a few tears as we started to bring our time  together to a close.

We had been planning to say our group goodbyes at that point, so that everyone would have a choice of heading back to the hotel or staying out a bit longer to catch one final glimpse of the Eiffel Tower, but everyone ended up choosing to stick together and make a quick trip back to Trocadero to catch the 11pm sparkles!

Here's our group at the end of our closing circle, proudly displaying their love of Paris!

Here's a photo from Place du Trocadero, with our lovely night-time view of the Eiffel Tower. We all made it there in time to catch the lights that flicker every hour, and Elizabeth fulfilled her karaoke dreams (with some technical assistance from Hally) by serenading us all with the beautiful song "The Secret of Happiness." The lyrics fit the moment perfectly: 

The secret of happiness is

Living in the now

Living in the time it takes to blink

I think, is how

We're meant to be living

We followed up that beautiful moment -- a perfect almost-end to an amazing two weeks -- with a lively trip back to the hotel, which included Maeve learning to juggle oranges on the metro and Leo, Elizabeth, and Eliot racing each other through the tunnels, but that's another story...