Welcome to My Chateau

Ok so we visted the market out front of our building in the morning yesterday. It was a fantastic experience with many different stalls selling nice fresh produce (right Eric? He got a worm in his salad even though I'd cleaned it really good), fish, meats, cheeses and two chicken and potato rotisserie places... that's what we got for lunch yesterday... roasted chicken and roasted potatoes yummy!

See that half open window? that's our apartment!!! we watched this man put out his chickens in the early morning and the potatoes cook in the drippings...very tasty!

The Front of My Chateau...

Yesterday we decided to visit a small chateau outside the city. it was highly recommended to us by a couple of Quebecois tourists we met when at Notre Dame the other day. So we made the trek through the metro to the train station and then took the 45 minute train ride out of Paris to Melun to see the Vaux de Viscomte - the chateau belonging to the finance minster for Francois and Louis the XIV, by the name of Nicolas Fouquet. Fouquet was the main reason that Louis XIV had such a lovely life as he had been the driving force behind the increase in taxes as well as the "business" side of being a ruler.

Anyway, there was so much money in the coffers and Fouquet was paid so grandly by King Francois that he had lots of money to build a wonderful mansion, complete with astounding gardens. When King Louis came to visit Fouquet put 2000 candles around the mansion to light his way. Louis was so jealous of the chateau that he had to build an even better mansion for himself and so he built the Palace of Verseilles, which is based on this chateau. Personally I liked the Louve (which I've only seen from the outside currently) as a Palace and think he should have kept it instead of build something else...but what do I know???

The Back of My Chateau...

From the back (this is a picture from about 1/3 of the way from the house to the Hercules statue, errected to signify the Herculean effort required to create such a divine living space. The gardens were symmetrical and absolutely amazing! You had to really walk down the yard so that you could see some of the effects of the yard that you couldn't see from the house steps. We did a tour of the home, which is being reconstructed, but has been featured on a number of movies including Marie Antoinette with Kirsten Dunst. We climbed up to the top of the bell tower and had a spectacular view of the grounds. It was an amazing feat. I'm sorry that Louis destroyed so much of it when he took stuff for Verseilles. (those small buildings to the left and right of the main house are the stables, one full stable on the left was turned into a neat museaum to showcase all kinds of carriages through the years as well as a neat little pony carriage for a child!)

We had a lovely picnic in my back garden overlooking the grounds and watching all the visitors who wanted to come and pay hommage to my wonderful garden (I know - fantasies are good for you!) We took the train back to Paris and then the Metro home.

Today we rented some Velibs, Paris has a whole bunch of bike stands available for rent (about every 300 metres there is a stand). You can rent a bike for 30 minutes, the trade it in for another bike for another 3o minutes. It was a great, fast efficient and cool way to get around paris. We headed for the Rue de Cherche Midi looking for the Poilane (sorry about the lack of accents). Sam and I had seen Giada diLaurentis feature this boulangerie on her show Everyday Italian and asked Annette to add it to our must visits... we didn't realize it was closed today but it is open tomorrow so even though I'm pouting here in this picture, I won't be pouting tomorrow after I go in and see the Bread Chandelier!!! Ok I'm not the only one pouting...so are the rest of us! But the saving grace is we didn't have to WALK here - we used the Velos!

After our failed attempt to get Giada's bread, we went to a little cafe, Matt had a cafe creme, sam a cappuccino, i had a cafe (AKA espresso) Eric had chocolat chaud and Annette had a nice glass of vin rouge, except it was cold and she would have preferred it room temp... Annette and Eric had escargots which smelled and looked delicious and I had Creme brulet! YUM YUM...best I've ever had. After our cafe visit we visted the Luxemboug gardens (we all agreed that the Kew gardens in England was much better).There were lots of kids playing with boats in the little fountain there, and a family of ducks were swimming (and sleeping) there as well. There was even a concert in the park, a real band... and Jenn, this is for you! FROM UTAH!!! The Ambassadors of Music were preforming in the gardens and they were excellent. I heard them but when I finally decided to go and watch they were just finishing their last song and they started to put their instruments away. They were heading to Notre Dame of Paris so who knows... we could have seen them there I guess! after that we found our way home on the velos and had dinner and a lovely strawberry tarte dessert courtesy of Annette and Eric. Annette and Eric have gone out to a play - Les Maladies Imaginaires - a classic and one of Annette's most favourite. She told me her class studies it every year. It sounded like fun but we were afraid we'd not understand enough of the play to make it worth while so we are staying home, doing up some Laundry, planning our day tomorrow, our trip to Verseille on Wednesday and just relaxing watching the NRJHits all videos channel on French TV...why can't we have one of those???

Anyway, I'm off to start some laundry!