This palace was commissioned by the Sun King, Louis XIV. Versailles was once the capital of France as it symbolized the French monarchy. Under King Louis XIV, the court reloacted Versailles to Paris. Here is where King Louis XIV would host his extravagant parties.
Here are your fearless leaders!!!
Students explored the palace in groups, and there was a "quiz" to help you find your way around. Here is the famous "Hall of Mirrors."
And one of the King's many bedrooms....
The palace was crazy crowded!!! The gardens were not free (apparently you have to pay on the weekends now), so I just took photos from above.
Here are some students enjoying time in the palace.
After venturing through the palace, we had lunch next to the chateau. It was one of our best meals yet! Dessert was amazing- chocolate filled eclairs!
Hey Payton, will you watch my bag while I go to the bathroom?
Here are some pics of the preparation of the Tour de France in Versailles as we left to head back to Paris.
The last activity on our program was to head to the Eiffel Tower!! This tower is over 1000 feet high, and it was created for the World's Fair.
Luckily, the line to the top of the tower wasn't super long. We gave our group a choice- they could take the stairs or they could take the elevator. Those that took the stairs had to climb over 700 stairs to the first level, and from there they would take the elevator to the top. Here is a view from the first level.
I went up with the elevator group, and we immediately went to the top of the tower. We somehow ended up in a different elevator than the rest of our group, so we split off and all met up at the meeting point under the tower when we were finished.
Once we were at the top, I started to feel light headed and sick. I think it was from lack of hydration and too much sun! I went down to the bottom to lay in the park with Sam. We both relaxed and had a nice time people watching before meeting back up with our group.
At the top, some people locked their love on the Eiffel Tower!
Once we all made it back down and met up as a group, it was time for dinner. The problem now was that the Tour de France was ending in Paris, right as we were trying to get to dinner. Our bus driver tried his best to get us to our restaurant. Luckily we had our delegate Charlotte from Germany who is fluent in German, English, and French. Sabrina didn't speak French, so Charlotte took charge for our group and communicated with our bus driver to get us where we needed to go.
Oh how we loved this bus driver! I sat behind him, and he was texting while driving in Paris! AH! He was quite stressed out due to the road closures during the Tour de France, that he even started smoking his cigarette on the bus! My favorite part was that he followed Sabrina into the hotel and asked her for money for dinner- seriously dude?!?! He was crazy!
After driving around for over an hour, there was no way our bus was going to take us anywhere near where we needed to eat. The closest the bus could get us was about 2.5 miles away, and the subways were closed. We decided it would be best to go back to the hotel and see what or meal options were. Once we got to the hotel, we checked on pizza delivery, but they don't do that in Paris. Our next option was a restaurant, but it is hard to find something that can accommodate 40 teenagers, and for 7 euros a piece. In the end, we were stuck going to Mc Donald's. I know that many people were disappointed because it was our last meal together on program, but there were extenuating circumstances that didn't leave us with other choices.
Once we all got our food at McDonald's, we went back to the hotel and had our goodbye meeting where we handed out awards to the students for things they had earned throughout the program. It was our last night in Europe, so we did an extra late bed check to ensure we had time to pack and prepare for our departure.
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