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France Day 3
On Sunday the weather was much nicer. It was a bit breezy but the sun was out for most of the day so the temperature felt pretty comfortable. We drove the almost two hours to the Château de Versailles and arrived around 11:30am.
The palace is stunning from the outside. We got our tickets, which sadly I couldn't get for free because even though I'm temporarily a resident of the EU, you have to be a permanent resident. The line to get into the palace itself took about an hour, which apparently isn't too bad considering how long it can get sometimes. Once we got inside, the palace was just as beautiful on the inside as it was on the outside. There were many different sections and rooms to go in with so many different paintings and details to look at. Some of the coolest areas were the Hall of Mirrors and Louis XVI's chamber. We spent quite a bit of time walking through the palace before exiting to visit the Gardens.
When looking at the map for the gardens, I couldn't believe how big they were. It seemed like you could spend a full day getting lost in there. The gardens were filled with beautiful fountains and perfectly manicured hedges and bushes. We even stumbled across a fountain that was set to have a fountain display in about 10 minutes, but that ended up being very disappointing. The fountains just shot water higher and it stayed high in the air for the duration of the show. That was it. So we watched for about 2 minutes before moving on. Sadly, after the "show" ended, all of the fountains in the garden were turned off so we weren't able to see one section of the garden in its full glory, but it was still beautiful.
Then we walked to the back section of the park where there was a small and I'm assuming man-made lake where people could rent row boats. Jelly and I laid down on the grass by the water for a while taking in the beautiful weather. It was so peaceful.
Once Versailles closed at 7pm we drove about 30 minutes to the Paris city centre. The nice thing about Sundays is you don't have to pay for parking, so parking in both Versailles and Paris was free.
Jelly first brought me to the main area where you can view the Eiffel Tower called Trocadéro. I couldn't believe I was actually standing there looking at such an iconic structure. It was beautiful. After taking a couple pictures, we walked down towards the tower itself. There were so many street vendors selling little Paris souvenirs and beer and wine. It reminded me a bit of NYC. We were walking to go underneath the tower and as we were passing by we stopped just to see how expensive it was to climb the tower. When we saw that it was only a little over €5, we decided to do it just in time for the sunset. It was also nice because it wasn't crowded at all which was very surprising. We climbed to the second level and watched the sunset from there. The city views were stunning and so was the sunset. As usual, pictures could never do it justice. I really wish I could've frozen time right then and there with Jelly and I holding eachother standing on the Eiffel Tower watching the sun go down over Paris. I will remember that moment for the rest of my life.
On the way down we bought a hot chocolate from the little cafe on the first level and it was actually really delicious. We walked down the stairs at a pretty fast pace because we wanted to catch the first light show of the tower from the ground. We sat on a bench near the base and watched as lights made the tower sparkle against the night sky. Sitting there looking up at the massive landmark, I literally got chills.
After the light show ended we began to make our way back to the car. On the way, we stopped at one of the street vendors so that I could buy a couple little Eiffel Tower keychains because they had a really good deal. Jelly greeted the vendor and he ended up giving me another keychain for free. Jelly prided himself in how his kindness towards the vendor resulted in a free keychain, and he thought that would be a good little anecdote for my blog, so there you go Jelly!
We also stopped at the Trocadéro on our way back to the car to admire the Eiffel Tower one last time. (This part is going to get a bit sappy so if you don't care to read it, skip to the next paragraph) Jelly loves Ed Sheeran and one of the songs that he loves and always listens to and plays on guitar is Perfect. Of all the songs that the street performer could've been playing and singing when we walked up to the Trocadéro, he was playing Perfect. Jelly started singing it quietly and then pulled me in, in the middle of all of these people and we started slow dancing. In that moment, dancing under the night sky in a crowd of people, listening to that song, looking out at the glowing Eiffel Tower, it literally felt like a dream and I can't remember the last time I was that genuinely blissful.
When we were driving out of Paris Jelly drove down the famous street called Les Champs Èlysée so that I could see the Arc de Triomphe. It was a nice street and the Arc looked so grand lit up in the night at the beginning of the street.
This day was literally perfect and I'm thankful to have been so lucky, and to have gotten to experience all of that with Jelly.
