Château de Versailles – Part Three

Welcome to the third and final installation of My Visit to Versailles.

Me, in the cold, 12 December 2009

 

Château de Versailles – Part Two

It’s a Monday, and here you go!!

Welcome to Part Two about my trip to Versailles this past December (2009). Part One can be found here. Part One includes an introduction about the Château,  information about who should and who should not visit, and preparations and recommendations about planning a trip there. UPDATE: I have also just posted Part Three: my post-trip analysis — what I learned and discovered, as well as some additional links for reading more on Versailles.

Part Two is about…

What To See While You Are There

There are essentially four big (huge) but basic things to see at Versailles: The Palace, The Gardens, the Grand Trianon, and the Queen’s Estate (the Petit Trianon and Hamlet).

Outside of the Palace

 

Château de Versailles – Part One

Finally. Something I have been working on (or, really, not working so much on) for weeks now: the long-awaited post on Versailles. I’ve been “talking” this one up for so long now that I am at risk for letting you all down; after all my hype and your reading it, I’m worried that you will think, “That’s not such a great post! What was her problem in getting it done?”

Well, in my own defense of imaginary and (likely) unfounded criticisms (my Internal Critic must be set on “High” today), it has been the sheer massiveness of all that is the Château and grounds at Versailles, and trying to capture an essence of it, just a portion of my experience there, that has kept me in a perfectionistic bind of feeling I am not going to write about it adequately or to share accurately what it was I found there. This has become my bête noire of posts.

But, I have forged on. Herewith I present to you: My Visit to Versailles.

Marie-Antoinette and her three children by Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun, 1788

Photo source: ParisKarin (moi); information source: Mary Ann Sullivan, Bluffton University

 

What I Ate for Breakfast Today aka Ghetto Living in Paris, Part Deux

I’ve got blogstipation, big time.

I have plenty of writing projects and topics. In fact, that is the problem. There are so many topics I want to write about that they are backing up on me now, and I am paralyzed as a result. I cannot seem to make a move to post any *one* thing when twenty things clamor to be written about. It has built up to a high level of frustration and I’m about ready to pop.

I have decided, therefore, to just sit and write something to get a post up, since it has been way too many days since my last post.**

 

An Engaging Story

A portion of our Christmas tree, Christmas 2009

It’s been a full two weeks since I posted here and I have been itching to get back to it. I have spent the better part of the day doing laundry, catching up on the phone  with my best friend, Janet, who had been back in the States for the holidays, and trying to get hundreds of megapixels of photos loaded onto Flickr. That and it is the first full day I have had with the computer all to myself in the daytime, and the first day in which it has been *totally* quiet in the apartment! I have been relishing the silence, just me and my thoughts.

 

Happy Holidays?

Christmas decorations at the Forum des Halles Shopping Center in the 1st arr. Paris

The past few years I have felt decidedly more Grinch-y (like he was before his heart grew three sizes too big) about Christmas than Cindy Lou Who-ish, or Scrooge, Post-Ghosts.

The way I see it, Christmas in the States from the time that I was a kid in the 1970s, has become “Cashmas,” which Urbandictionary.com defines as:

a celebration of materialism in which its celebrants attempt to flatter or impress relatives, friends, and acquaintances with the extent of their purchasing power. (The “power to get”.) Cashmas co-opts signs, symbols, and sympathies from other religious holidays of the winter season to mask its foundation of conspicuous consumption.

Maybe for some there is still either a genuine religious component which makes the season more for them, or they have an authentic love for All Things Christmas from the decorations to the foods to the ambiance that is created by such a warm and cozy holiday amidst the darkest days of the year. For me?

Christmas has felt like one big pain in the ass for a lot of years now.

 

First Snow

I’ve been plotting a post for days. Numerous posts, in fact. I have wanted to update on my journey to Versailles and my outing with the very kind, interesting, and erudite Peter of Peter’s Paris, not to mention the various tidbits I have come across on the ‘net which have intrigued me, made me laugh, or made me think. I’ve wanted to share all of these things, and then Mother Nature comes along and trumps ALL of the post ideas, and gives me this:

Our First Snow

I was in bed still at about 8:10 in the morning. PJ had just left for work, I was re-reading Sarah Turnbull’s book about being an Australian expatriate in Paris, Almost French,  I catch a glimpse out of the bedroom window and see white, fluffy flakes falling from the sky!

 

Ghetto Living in Paris, Part 1

Outside our window at sunrise, 8:28 am, Tues. 9 Dec., 2009

Yes, sunrise is at about 8:30 am right now.  Check it out:

It’s a screen shot of this site: Time and date dot com – Sun & Moon.   Believe it or not, Paris is really far NORTH. Like As Far North as Canada North. Infoplease lists Paris as 48° 48N latitude, which compares to Cornerbrook, Newfoundland or Minot, North Dakota. We’re freakin’ north of Québec (city). No, it’s not Alaska North, but a lot more north than I think the average person realizes.

What this means is that we near the Winter Soltice and the days shorten, it is dark in the morning until 8:30 and beyond, and then sun goes down before 5 pm. It’s conducive to hibernating, something I do quite a lot of these days.

 

Back to the Blog & Christmas Lights

A suncatcher/hanging I gave to PJ for his birthday yesterday. It is a fairy resting on a crescent moon. I found it when I went shopping a couple months ago at the Marché aux Fleurs.

I’ve taken a week off of blogging at my site here after officially completing the writing of 63,523 words for this blog during the month of November during the NaNoWriMo challenge. I was pretty pooped after all that writing. Still, I have missed coming here and posting with great frequency and voluminocity. According to spell-check, “voluminocity” is not a word. I am sure it is supposed to be something boring like “volume” or “voluminousness.” Yup, those ones check out. But “voluminocity” feels like a good word — a combo of “volume” and “velocity.” That’s the word I want to describe what I felt like for the month of November here.

 

NaNoWriMo Ends – Crazy Quilting This Blog to Wrap Up

The Eiffel Tower at midnight, 21 (22) November 2009

Today it ends – National Novel Writing Month. I have spent the past 30 days accruing words on this not-so-novel-but-writing-project-nonetheless.  As of last Friday, I now have 54,952 words posted on this blog, give or take. By adding WordPress word counts manually, that’s what it says I have. I have yet to upload to the NaNoWriMo site to verify my word count, but I will do that when I finish this post.

What is foremost in my mind today however is, “How do I wrap this month up on this blog? What is the “ending” to the stories I have been telling this past month?