Versailles - Paris - Turin

Day 4: 7am, we said our good-byes and gratitude to Aunty Nessy who has generously shared her Paris place with us. Though we’ll never know how we can return the favor to her directly, we do intend to ‘play it forward’. We caught the metro from Courcelles to Pyramides where we met up with our tour bus to Versailles.

real people live & work here

Kanootz' shot of kids on field trip

Snowflake. Nah! Chandelier bottom.

9am, our bus departed from Cityrama headquarters. It was packed – with Japanese tourists! They all wanted front / top deck seats. We were quite happy occupying the whole spread of tail seats. And we got some sleep on the way, yippee! 9:45, we arrived in Versailles as scheduled. It was a sunny day but the chill was still there. The tour was much like the tour of Windsor Castle. Can’t really tell much about their differences but I do know I like Versailles better. The inside was also a lot more camera-friendly. We were able to take some shots of the great big chandeliers in the Hall of Mirrors.

Hall of Mirrors

ceiling in chateau

When we got to the landscaped gardens, Kanootz said, Inang Inday (my grandma) would have loved to be in there. We imagine that it’d look even more stunning in the summer when the frozen fountains actually do their work. The trip cost us 130E in total.

Chateau Gardens

We could have had it a bit cheaper, but we were too exhausted to sacrifice comfort. This whole leg of the trip has been the most expensive one (so far) but… we wanted Paris to be a pleasant experience, not one wherein all our memories are dominated by skimping and budget-everything!

Kheli's shot

Boys will be boys!

chandelier bigger than me

1:00 pm, we were back in the city center. We hurried to Champs-Elysses to try and grab those pair of shoes which Kheli spent the whole of last night mulling over. In the same gallery, we also found yet another ‘Turo-turo’ style Thai restaurant and their menu looked good. Most of the people dining there looked like professional office workers, so this must be a favorite local choice. Not bad for our last meal in Paris.

Chateau corner shot

The man who served Kheli at the shoe shop helped us out with some information on how to best get to the airport to catch our 4:05 pm flight. So at 2pm, we walked to the closest metro again and came out from another where Air France bus was waiting for us. It was like everything was laid out for us, and the timings were perfect. We made it to the airport in time. And Kheli was allowed into the plane – yippee! 5:30 pm and we were already in Turin’s Caselle Airport where Papang had been in the car waiting for us for an hour.

FROST at midday

seeing doubles c",)

And was Paris romantic? Well, first of all, we had Kheli with us. Then at times when we do try to kiss, our lips were freezing and wind-chapped for most of the trip. We couldn’t even hold hands because we’d rather keep them in our own pockets. We did have some moments, like dancing to some easy jazz on the cruise boat… young Kheli right next to us of course… haha! Besides, kanootz isn’t the cheesy-weepy-romantic kind of guy, & I like that about him! As well, of course, as the fact that he makes me laugh...

my pick: chateau boulders

I would never want to ever forget… that on the plane, high above the Alpine mountains bordering France and Italy, the view was so awe-inspiring! It’s such an irony that we’d paid over a thousand euros for a trip to Paris, and still the sight that was most remarkable of all – is the one that we hadn’t paid any penny for. Here it is:

French-Italian Alpine Border

Versailles - Paris - Turin

Turin, Italy