My second trip to France was very different than my first trip. This time I spent a lot more time away from Paris than in it. My hotel was in Paris, so I spent every night there, but during the day I was venturing about in France. On Saturday I visited the Palace of Versailles. Versailles is several miles (I'd guess about 10 or 15 miles) southwest of Paris. It was the home of the French royal family until 1789 when the French Revolution ended the notion that God selected people to rule the Earth for Him. Louis XIV built the palace and the incredible gardens behind it. The palace itself is beyond spectacular (inside and out), but the gardens were the most impressive thing to me. There are magnificent fountains in the garden that are amazing by today's standards, but are even more incredible when you think about the fact that they were built in the 1600s.

Here are my pictures from Versailles:

Approaching Versailles (in the rain)
A little closer...
Finally there!
And then it stopped raining.
Versailles from the Gardens
Chapel in Versailles
Giant painting in the Hercules Drawing Room
Versailles wall in the Peace Drawing Room
The Hall of Mirrors
Outside Versailles again
Statue of Charlemagne

Pictures from the Versailles Gardens:

Gardens 1
Very cool garden picture
Gardens 3
Gardens 4
Gardens 5
Gardens 6
Gardens 7
Gardens 8
Versailles 9
Statue in Gardens

And now to the really impressive fountains:

Fountain 1
Fountain behind a statue
REALLY cool fountain!
Fountain and gardens
Close-up of my favorite fountain
Much cooler in person
Fountain with a lot of grapes

After I spent the entire morning and a good bit of the afternoon at Versailles, I caught the train back to Paris. Since my train dropped me off at the Invalides train station, I decided to go tour the Hotel de Invalides which is the French Army museum. It's also where Napoleon's tomb is located. I was not terribly entertained with the Army museum. If I didn't know better, I would have thought France won World War II all by themselves. And the rest of the museum contained only old French military uniforms.....hmmmm.....style over substance? Anyway, here are a couple pictures of the building.

Knights around the windows!
The Dome Church

Inside the Dome Church is where the remains of Napoleon are found. His body was moved here in 1861. I saw a special on the Discovery Channel a couple weeks ago where they talked about how Napoleon actually died due to arsenic poisoning while he was in exile on some tiny British island near Africa. Anyway, when they exhumed his body (19 years after his death) to move it back to Paris, it was in perfect condition because arsenic is also a preservative -- this is how they figured out he was poisoned. They say that if they opened his tomb today, his body would still be perfect. Here is a poor picture of his tomb.

Napoleon's tomb

My major purpose for the trip to France was to visit the D-Day beaches in Normandy. I had purchased my train tickets to Caen over the internet, but was unable to confirm any tours to the D-Day beaches, etc. But I figured it was a major tourist attraction, so they would certainly have buses that shuttled people to the beaches. So, I catch the train to northern France with no real plan. Once I get to Caen, I had no clue where anything was in the (larger than expected) town, so I walked around trying to communicate in French with the locals -- most people don't speak English there. Anyway, I finally found the tourist office where I discovered they only have a van that runs to the beaches twice a day, and I wouldn't be able to do the tour AND catch my train back to Paris. I was quite disappointed, but I did manage to catch the city bus out to the Caen D-Day Memorial Museum which was very good. I spent awhile there and then came back to Caen. Most of Caen was destroyed during the invasion, but a very few buildings survived. The rest of the town is pretty horrible looking since it was rebuilt after the war. Here are the pictures of the interesting buildings:

Caen building 1
Caen building 2
Caen building 3

Back in Paris on Monday, went out to see the Grand Arche de La Defense. It is a huge office complex...so big that the Notre-Dame Cathedral could fit underneath it. It is also lined up with the Arc de Triomphe on the Champs-Elysees which is pretty interesting.

Grand Arche de La Defense
Arc de Triomphe in the distance

And last, and probably least is a picture of the inside of a Paris Metro station. It was early, so this is why it's nearly empty.

Paris Metro near my hotel