Over the last couple of days I’ve been to quite a few places which have been fab! Paris is such a large city and i love the fact there is so much to do and see. I’ve been here nearly two weeks now and my days have been full of brilliant things to do which all have been brilliant.
On Wednesday morning i took two trains to visit The Palace of Versailles -(info- has been listed as a World Heritage Site for 30 years and is one of the greatest achievements in French 17th century art. Louis XIII’s old hunting pavilion was transformed and extended by his son, Louis XIV, when he installed the Court and government there in 1682. A succession of kings continued to embellish the Palace up until the French Revolution.) I got there after about an hour of travelling because its quite far out of Paris Centre, the queue was again massive but it went down pretty quick. The Palace itself is beautiful and elegant, packed full of gold and paintings. The rooms are decorated with different coloured curtains and the walls are dressed in the same fabrics. It was really crowded in there, so i looked around but it was a bit too busy to stay in there for too long so i went to the gardens which are HUGE!!!! Wow, they are very well maintained and you can literally walk for miles seeing all the lakes, trees, plants and fountains. At the bottom you can hire a small boat to relax in! Because they are so large you can also hire golf caddies to cruise around in. I personally enjoyed the gardens more then the Palace, but i think its just because of how packed it was inside. It was a lovely day out and i am glad i went but it would of probably been a good idea to read up a little bit about the history of the Palace before you go.
The next day i met up with two lovely people who i met via a travel group on Facebook! A girl from America and a guy from Australia. They were absolutely lovely i am SO glad i met up with them because after 10 days with not really speaking to people it was nice to be a bit social and experience some places with others. I do like being alone, but its nice also to laugh with other people(not just at myself…).
We met at 11.00 at the The Centre Pompidou, (info-designed by Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers, is a 20th-century architectural marvel, immediately recognizable by its exterior escalators and enormous coloured tubing. It is home to the National Museum of Modern Art and is internationally renowned for its 20th and 21st century art collections.) Its a fabulous building and totally stands out in Paris as most things are old but this building is very industrial. Well.. if you know me well enough you will know i LOVE art, my favourite Artists who i have studied a lot are Kandinsky, Klee, Pollock, and Braque. I saw paintings by them all!! I was in heaven. Kandinskys work is absolutely amazing i cannot fault it at all. There was also a David Hockney Exhibition which was brilliant. He actually painted quite a lot of Yorkshire, i couldn’t believe it!
After that we took a trip the ‘the best falafel place there is in Paris’ – L’As du Fallafel. Its apparently famous and there is always a queue outside, there was a camera crew there at the time filming!! We then took a trip to Shakespeare and Company Bookstore(which is apparently famous too! I didn’t know this either) -(info-From the first day the store opened, writers, artists, and intellectuals were invited to sleep among the shop’s shelves and piles of books, on small beds that doubled as benches during the day. Since then, an estimated 30,000 young and young-at-heart writers and artists have stayed in the bookshop, including then unknowns such as Alan Sillitoe, Robert Stone, Kate Grenville, Sebastian Barry, Ethan Hawke, Jeet Thayil, Darren Aronfsky, Geoffrey Rush, and David Rakoff. These guests are called Tumbleweeds after the rolling thistles that “drift in and out with the winds of chance,” as George described. A sense of community and commune was very important to him—he referred to his shop as a “socialist utopia masquerading as a bookstore.” )
It felt like i was back in York going in the bookstore! Very small and quirky, it was nice to see some English books! They have writing workshops there as well which i bet are brilliant for only 6.00euros. Here are some photos i took of my adventures!!
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