Day 7 - Chateau Chantilly

Bonjour!

Today the group split into two halves - one half went to Versailles, the other half went to Chantilly - the chateau that invented Whipped Cream!  Our little group that went to Chantilly consisted of Ms. Matthews and the three of us who have either gone to Versailles before, or are planning to go with our family later!

We met at the early time of 10 am this morning, and the four of us had a fairly uneventful trip to Chantilly.  We arrived at the chateau around 11:30, and it was so nice!  It had the rounded corners and a mote that surrounded just like a fairy tale castle! Pictures will come when I make it back stateside.

After walking through the chateau with all of its beautiful paintings (Henri from Orléans collected them and requested that they stay hung just like he had them), we walked to the petite hamlet that boasted a restaurant and garden.  We stopped in the restaurant for lunch, and we all got a bowl of fresh strawberries with Chantilly whipped cream.  None of us have ever tasted anything so delicious!  After we all licked our plates clean (not literally) and finished our cider, we wandered through the gardens until we decided it was time to leave.

Our way back to Paris was much more difficult than our way to the chateau.  At first, we struggled with finding the train station, and when we finally arrived we had over an hour to wait for the next train to Paris, so we went and got a coffee.  When we finally got on our train, we stopped at the same station as we did before to switch back to the B line which went straight to our hotel. We used our last metro ticket to get onto what we thought was the B line, however, we didn't actually get on the right train!  We ended up in the southeastern corner of the city instead of at our hotel.  We quickly went back when we realized our mistake, but we had to use another metro ticket to switch from the wrong train to a metro.  We were all out of tickets, we didn't have any coins to buy new ones, and the offices were closed because it was Sunday.  Luckily, one of the gates was stuck open, so we could walk right through onto our next train!  Finally, hours after we left Chantilly, we made it back to our hotel for a petite snooze before dinner.

~Sara