Paris part 3

I am going to lump Thursday and Friday together so that I can get on to Brussels. I am a few days behind now.

Thursday morning and afternoon were spent in Gare de Lyon, one of the big train stations in Paris, trying to reserve a ticket to Marseille. Unfortunately, not very many people there spoke English, and the station was not very clearly laid out. We spent a couple of hours waiting in different queues, only finding the proper one after quite some time. As I have mentioned before we were unable to book a train to Marseille, so we ended up booking an earlier train to Brussels. This created a slight problem, as we now needed to cancel our booking in Marseille and find a place in Brussels for a couple of days [we also needed a place in Prague for the first few days, because I think Sam has flaked on us], and our hostel was without internet. This meant an internet café. We found one, paid the 4 euro for an hour, and spent almost all of it booking two hostels [even the few altered key placements on the French keyboard give someone who uses the computer as much as me quite a bit of hell when trying to type]. We succeeded, and despite the monetary loss decided that our budgets could handle a nice reward dinner.

We headed over to Pigalle [the red light district in Paris], and walked around a bit, eventually making our way to Montmarte. Montmarte was probably my favorite part of Paris. I felt like it exemplified the romantic ideas one has of Paris. It was at the top of a hill, and full of cobble stone streets and cafes. The restaurant we ate at was one suggested by Lonely Planet, Le Maison Rose [The Pink House]. The way the food worked, which was rather nice, is that for a set price you get to choose a starter [soup, cheese, or salad], a main course, and a dessert [yogurt with sugar or cheese]. It was not something we could afford every day, but it was nice, and nothing feels fancier than having a lot of courses at dinner. I had French onion soup as my starter, for my main course I had chicken with rice and a wonderful cream and butter sauce with a strong anise flavor, and for dessert I had the French yogurt with sugar. Laura had the same, save for her main course was pasta Provencal, with all manner of vegetables. The food was excellent, and the restaurant was beautiful.

That about wraps it up for Thursday, now on to Friday:

Friday we went to Versaille. We did not actually tour the palace, because they charge quite a bit for that, but the gardens are free and beautiful, not to mention absolutely overloaded with statues. We prepared a picnic with some nice bread, cheese, pate, and wine, and ate it near the enormous pond in the center of the gardens.

After Versaille we headed back to Paris and finished off a few of the last things we had to do there, like have an éclair at a café on the Champs Elysees.

The next morning we had a light breakfast at a café and caught a train to Brussels. I will update further about Brussels soon, but for now allow me to preface it by saying I have never been to a place where I felt more like I could live there. It is a really wonderful city.