Chateaux de Chantilly

Another beautiful fall day in Paris! I love Fridays! Mostly - I love having no school on Fridays! It's so wonderful to wake up, and go do something fun while other people are in class, being tortured with history and grammer. Why be in class, when you can be out in France? Today we took a small day trip to the chateaux de Chantilly! (Pronounced "Chan - t - ya" if you are French, and Chan-tilly if you are me and want to pronounce it the way that sounds funner). I need to point out at this point that while "funner" is not actually a word - I consider it one and will therefore use it. So, we boarded the RER and 45 minutes later were in the cute little ville de Chantilly! Famous for horses, golfing, and of course - Chantilly creme! From the train station, the castle was a nice, 20 minute walk on this tree-lined trail of cuteness! The chateaux is really beautiful, and now is considered a museum because it holds the impressive and large art collection of the last duke who lived in it. A lof of original furniture is also there, which is also cool to see. We got there just in time as a college tour group - so we planned on tagging along so we could learn about the castle, but the tour guide was pretty doomful. Her tour was boring - so we departed the group and did our own thing!

Like all chateaux in France, there are enormous, beautiful, gardens! So many acres of land there is no way it was all used. In Chantilly - there is a formal, French garden behind the chateaux, an English garden on one side, and a Chinese-garden out to the east, along with a mini-forest. We walked through it all, stopping in the mini forest to admire the "hamlet." This a little, watt

le and daub, farm-type house, that Marie Antionette used when she built her Hamlet in the gardens of Versailles. It was tres charmant!

Since it is now nearly November, there was no one there! We basically had the entire chateaux and gardens to ourselves, which was wonderful! Except that all the "food kiosks" were closed, so there was no where to eat the lunch I had imagined, and to try a glob of creme! Alors, I had to wait until later, when we left and walked through the centre ville to get back to the train station. We found a little boulangerie where I got what was like a "giant pig in a blanket" - aptly named by Josh. It was a hot dog, inside a buttery, croissant-like, pastry thing. In otherwords - it was heaven in hot dog form. I was so starving too that it was extra delicious!

It is so awesome that these amazing, historical places are just a short-train ride away from Paris. And that there are hundreds of them! I could go somewhere different everyday of the week - and still not see half of it! It is kind of maddening, but I really love visiting chateaux - and the little villages around them. There is something so amazing to me about the fact that people actually lived in these enormous castles hundreds of years ago. They wore gigantic, elborate dresses, and had fancy balls! Now that I know a little about architecture, I love trying to anaylze and understand it. I really love France for its history, as well as its beauty. I asked Josh when we were in the Loire if he could spend one day in any time period, any place, as anyone - what he would choose. A really tough question to answer! He chose to be a founding father of the United States in 1776. I chose to be Marie Antionette (pre French Revolution), living at Versaille and going to huge ball. If only someone would invent the time machine......