Paris The Re-Up: In Which I Spend a Day Doing My Best Kirsten Dunst Impression.

If you’ve been keeping track my time in Ireland you know that I’ve been chasing that ornate castle fantasy the entire time. I always imagined that castles, being homes of kings and queens and other rich white people. were these huge, ornate to the point of awful, buildings. Imagine my surprise when I found out they were just basically just regular homes that happened to be built out of stone. I got close to that fantasy with the Kilkenny castle but that one was closer to just being a Victorian home. Creepy dolls included. I think the source of this castle fantasy stems from the obsession I’ve had with France since I was kid. As long as I wanted to visit Paris I wanted to see Versailles just as much. The name Versailles alone conjures up the idea of gold everything, miles of marble, acres of gardens dotted with gigantic fountains. Obviously, Versailles is not a castle. But my American brain has a hard time understanding the difference between a castle and a palace and I just assumed they were all the same. The last time I came to Paris, as many of you know, I couldn’t afford to head out to Versailles (or do much of anything really.) To know I was so close to it but also so far was a bummer to me. This time around, I made sure it was the first thing I booked.

Originally, I was going to go on my first full day in Paris but that ended up being Labor Day so I had to rearrange my entire schedule and it caused me to have a panic attack. I booked a timed entry ticket for 9am, pretty much right when the palace opens. This also meant I had to be up at like 6am for a day that was also going to include seeing the opera at 7pm and dinner reservations at 11pm. Just a nice quiet, short day. So bright and early I got up and headed to the train station. I wish I could say that I knew where I was going and which train exactly I had to take but I was completely confused. All I knew was the train I needed went straight to Versailles and luckily I was not the only tourist waiting for the same train so I just followed the groups of old people in visors, Tommy Bahama polo shirts, and white New Balance sneakers that seemed much more confident than I was. Luckily my plan paid off and I ended up on the right train. The palace is a good distance away from the train station, and having just a vague idea of where I had to go I just followed the groups of other tourists (which had now over the duration of the ride grew into a mass of people) up to the palace. It was a very unceremonious approach. It’s one of those instances of “oh, there it is.” and you have to walk through a large gravel parking lot to get to the gate.

As I approached Versailles I was glad I had bought a timed entry ticket. The normal line was already massive and the palace wasn’t even open yet. The timed line was long but moved swiftly. As I was waiting I overheard an older woman asking a couple if their ticket had their time on it because her’s didn’t and she was worried about it. I don’t think they could fully understand her so I turned back and told her it was okay, mine didn’t say the time I picked either but an employee going through the line checking tickets to make sure people were in the right line checked mine and just said “okay” so she was fine. We kept talking after that. We never actually exchanged names but she had wonderful stories to share. At that point in time, she had been in Europe for 3 weeks and the week before she left she retired. The last time she was in Europe she was 25. She had nothing planned for the trip. All she knew was that she was going to be flying into Rome and then flying back from Paris. She picked cities as she went, making her choices by available flights and available AirBnB’s. She saw Vienna, Budapest, and Prague, spending only a couple days in each one. She wanted to stay in Europe longer but was eager to get back home to her dog. She was already planning her next trip which was to be a cross country road trip with said dog. She lived in California and was an amateur photographer, she belonged to a photographers group based out of Cleveland (!!!) called NPeg (I believe) that takes occasional group trips out to places like Yosemite. I couldn’t help but admire her. Here I was having a mental breakdown over having to rearrange my schedule because of Labor Day and she’s like “yeah I’m just kind of floating along, seeing what I can get into.” It was a reminder that things always work out in the end so chill the fuck out. And also like… goals.

Her and I separated once we got inside the palace. I grabbed an audio tour for some reason and ended up putting it back after walking around with it for 5 minutes. The one good thing about getting in this early is that there’s really not that many people, there’s still a lot but not as many as there are later in the day. The downside though is that it’s when all the tour buses come so each room is jammed packed full of large groups of people. Because they’re getting guided tours they’re obviously not breezing through the rooms so its hard to get through some of the rooms and it seemed like anytime I got ahead of one group I ran into another. While it was a bit frustrating for me at times it did cause me to just stop and take in my surroundings. The palace is really magnificent. Gold everything, murals on the ceilings of each room, giant mirrors, ornate clocks, huge portraits. Everything you (me) could want in a palace. Of course you don’t have access to the entire palace but you get to see all the good stuff and sure that audio tour I immediately gave back could’ve given me tons of information and even told me which room was which but I enjoyed making up my own facts. Most of the rooms are actually quite small which is a bummer when your camera only has a fixed 50mm lens, I can’t get a shot of the whole room and instead end up just getting details. One way I solve this issue is photographing people taking pictures on their phone. It’s a weird obsession of mine. I do it everywhere I go. I’m fascinated by seeing what other people see. Is it creepy and an invasion of privacy? Sure. But oh well.

After making my way through the palace, I headed out to explore the gardens. Touring the gardens is actually free so you could spend the day just strolling around. You literally could spend a whole day in the gardens because they are so vast. I think I spent 6+ hours at the palace and at least 4 of them were in the gardens, the Trianons, and the Hamlet. None of the fountains were running while I was there and some of the smaller gardens were closed off. I was lucky with the weather. It wasn’t a gorgeous day for a garden wander by any means but it wasn’t too hot and the rain held off literally until I got back on the train. As I said, the gardens are vast and it’s easy to get lost. There’s mazes centered around beautiful fountains, wide open lawns, statues spread throughout the gardens (often depicting Greek gods and folklore) rows and rows of massive trees, and even a canal. I know for a fact I barely saw half the gardens. I googled it. The best part of the gardens though, in my mind, was how quiet it was. There’s such an immense difference between the packed, closed quarters of the Palace and the wide open spaces of the gardens. There’s room to breath, relax, and get away from people. It really gives you the opportunity to take in your surroundings.

After exploring the gardens, I walked to the Grand Trianon which was built as a retreat for Louis XIV and his mistress. Being a chateau used to escape the strict etiquette of the royal, and currently an official residence of the French President and used for receiving foreign dignitaries , it’s obviously not a spectacular building on par with the palace but it’s still fascinating to see. The most famous part of the building is it’s peristyle (a large porch with columns surrounding the perimeter) which is made up of black and white tiles and surrounded by pink marble columns. Again though, after coming from Versailles, every other building is like “hm.. okay. That’s nice.” It’s like saying they all “have a lot of heart.” Know what I mean? After the Grand Trianon, I headed over to the Petite Trianon, which was Marie Antoinette’s preferred residence. Along the way I stopped at the French Pavilion to take a few photos of the symmetry of the building among the perfectly manicured greenery. This ended up being quite the headache as once I found my spot, a group of people walked into the middle of my shot and spent a good 15 minutes photographing all the tulips in front of the building. I know they noticed me, I made eye contact with one of them. So I just waited them out. Then naturally, just as they walked away another group of people walked up and did the same thing. So I waited some more. Then once they left, an older British couple came up. This time though, they didn’t linger. The wife noticed me trying to get a shot and she pulled her husband off to the side. I thanked them, grabbed my handful of shots and left. Ironically the best ones were of the upper half of the building, where none of those people were ever in the way. You can’t go inside the pavilion but you can walk right up to it and stare in. Of course there’s a massive chandelier in each room and an ornate marble fireplace. Just as you find in any old pavilion anywhere.

Of the various gardens and other buildings surrounding the palace, the Petit Trianon was my favorite. The Grand Trianon was nice but something about it was dark and stuffy and like it was trying to hard (if that’s possible for a building to do.) This one was lighter and brighter. You could tell it was a woman’s chateau. Yes there was gold and ornate furnishings and all that royal crap but the walls were all white and nothing was overdone or overwhelming. I don’t really know how to describe it properly. It was just… nice. I actually had a hard time finding the entrance to the building and I’m pretty sure I ended up walking through an exit but nobody said anything and I didn’t get arrested so it’s all good. From there I explored the grounds a bit more on my way to the hamlet. Fun fact: there are large rodents that look like albino beavers living by the Petit Trianon and apparently nobody knows what they are. I couldn’t even find anything when I Googled it just now. Maybe they’re ghosts or it was all just a hallucination brought on by dehydration. Who knows.

The Hamlet of Marie Antoinette is a weird fake village that was built as a refuge for Marie Antoinette to escape from the rigors of court life. She would dress up like a milkmaid and act like a peasant. That’s not a joke. Sometimes I think she may just be a misunderstand teenage queen and then I hear a fact like that and I’m like “what the fuuuuck kill her” Anyways, it was a real working farm in her day and it still has a large amount of animals on the grounds. It’s made up of buildings that look like a Thomas Kinkade painting or a fairy tale village in an amusement park. You can’t go inside any of the buildings and even the bathrooms were locked. It was overall a slightly bizarre experience. At this point it was starting to sprinkle more consistently so I began to make my way home.

I don’t know if I mentioned this yet but the grounds at Versailles are goddamn massive. It was at least a 20 minute walk just from the Hamlet to the gardens of the palace. Then I had to try and find an exit. I found one on the map that was close to where I was at the moment so I made a beeline for it only to discover it was closed. To hide my mistake from the public I strolled right by and randomly took a few photos so it just looked like I was wandering around because god forbid I should look embarrassing to a few dozen people I’ll never see again in my life. I made my way around a massive, completely unnecessary fountain and it was then that I started to side with the revolution. WHY IS THERE SO MUCH EVERYTHING. Another 20 minutes and I managed to make my way out and headed for the train station. As I was purchasing my ticket in the station I heard a rumbling noise and turned to see that it had started to downpour not even 3 minutes after i got inside. I’ve never been so happy to stop doing something out of exhaustion. Versailles was beautiful and fascinating but after 6 hours I still only saw maybe 60-70% of it. SO MUCH EVERYTHING.

Shortly after booking this trip to Paris, I found out that the Paris Opera was performing Carmen during my time there. I didn’t think twice about buying a ticket. I didn’t even care that I was practically in the nosebleeds. Carmen has been my favorite opera since I was in high school when we played a medley of songs from it in band. One of my favorite memories from my time in Chicago is from the summer 2008, shortly after I had there. I had a break between my classes so I headed down to Millennium Park to hang out for a bit and relax. As I laid on the lawn, the Chicago orchestra was rehearsing and they were doing songs from Carmen. It was a wonderful afternoon. Due to the rescheduling drama, my night at the opera was to be the same day as my day at Versailles.

On my way back to the city from Versailles, I began to second guess going to the opera. It was already almost 3pm by this point, I had been up since 6am, and the opera started at 7. I wasn’t going to get back to the hotel until 4 and I didn’t have dinner reservations until 11pm. I was beat and there was little time to rest. I grabbed a sandwich, a bag of chips, and some chocolate from the grocery store on my way back. I settled into my bed and debated with myself if I wanted to leave and all but settled on not going. Fortunately, I also debated it with Sarah who talked me back into going by reminding me that this was an opportunity that I couldn’t pass up. To see my favorite opera in my favorite city was the opportunity of a lifetime. I polished off the sandwich, showered, dressed, and headed back out.

This particular production was at the Opera Bastille, which is the more modern opera house in the city as opposed to the Palais Garnier (which you may know as the setting for the Phantom of the Opera). Which I gotta say is a lot less intimidating. Assuming that because it was the Paris Opera, I dressed relatively nice. Button down shirt, chinos, super cute bumble bee collar pin, and a windbreaker that looks like I wrapped a goddamn Dutch Golden Age painting around me. All of which I ended up sweating through during my hike up to the fourth floor. So imagine my surprise and confusion when the couple to my left showed up wearing jeans and Disney sweatshirts while the girls to my right had multiple shopping bags and one burped aggressively throughout most of the performance.

The whole night was mildly bizarre. I immediately started crying when the overture started. I couldn’t believe this was my life. I was in Paris. At the opera. About to watch Carmen. How was this happening? Then the tears dried as the production unfolded. To say this was a more modern take on Carmen is an understatement. It started with a group of soldiers standing in formation on stage while a man in nothing but briefs and a gun ran laps around the stage. As he ran around, the lieutenant strolled around in a very tight uniform (unbuttoned practically to his belly button and no undershirt) while sucking on a popsicle and cracking a whip. It was oddly erotic and I was pretty sure I’ve seen a similar video on PornHub. At one point, he takes the popsicle out of his mouth and puts it in the mouth of another soldier and it was at that point that I was certain I’d seen this on PornHub. The lieutenant is later killed by a car door being repeatedly slammed into his head, much to the shock and audible gasps of the audience. 10 minutes before that one of Carmen’s friends was almost raped on stage, after which she gave a another guy head behind a car. After which he walked back to his friends, zipping up his pants and high-fiving everyone. However, the most confounding part of it all was near the end. As the town gathered to watch the bullfighters enter the arena, a single woman in a bikini strolled out to the middle of the stage, laid out a towel, and then proceeded to lotion up and sun bathe. I couldn’t even pay attention to what else was happening on the stage because I was so confused on the bikini woman. Why was she there? Is she going to do anything else? Is she a character I don’t remember? The answer to all those by the way is “I don’t know.” “No.” and “No.” She eventually joined the rest of the crowd and sang along but that was the extent of her performance. During curtain call she was the second person out and came out alone for her bow. And the crowd went wild. I was and still am so confused. Despite the confusion that I’m just going to chalk up to the French just being the French, I was in love with the show. I wasn’t bored for a second. All the things didn’t even matter. The seats, the burping woman, the super long line at the bar during intermission where I didn’t have time to grab anything to eat, the bikini girl and graphic murder.

When the show ended, I popped on my headphones, turned on Lemonade, and headed back to the hotel practically walking on air. I cancelled my reservations in favor of finishing off my chips and passing out in bed. The day was excruciatingly long but I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

The surprisingly amazing view from the opera house.