And today we go to Versailles.
Versailles: Loius XIV, XV and XVI’s monument
to excess and decadence. No wonder the people
revolted. Luckily the palace survived
the revolution, as I’m sure it is a great money spinner now for the French. Just like Ludwig’s tributes to the Sun King
back in Bavaria are huge tourist attractions.
We met Shaz, Shan and Ken at Abbesses and metro’d our way,
with a little bit of getting lost between line changes for just that little bit
of added excitement, to our RER station at Musèe d’Orsay.
I was up early, and decided to go for an exploratory walk around Montmartre while Michelle slept in.
There were still quite a few people in the Place du Tertre, even at this early hour. I needed to get a map, however the tourist office wouldn’t open till 10:00am so I wandered around the mostly deserted streets, heading in the general direction of Sacré Cœur.
Our last day in Rome.
It is always a little sad as I leave one place I have quickly grown to
love, and yet of course exciting to think that I’ll soon be somewhere new.
Today we basically had a spare day free of any planned
activities since the juggling from the closed Colosseum meant that we had missed
going to Naples and Pompeii. Naples couldn’t have been an option today as there was no chance we would be back in time to make our
evening flight to Paris. So today was an
opportunity to sleep in and just take it easy.
And today we did just that.
After our 10:00AM checkout, we headed off to Termini station to
drop off our luggage. Seven weeks we’d
travelled through Europe without any address tags on our luggage, but now I was feeling
that my luck had run out, and I had best find some before we left our luggage in
the left luggage.
There are a lot of shops at Termini. Two levels of shops. The lower level included a McDonalds
alongside part of the old Servian wall.
I just love finding these old city walls, and this one is from the 4th
Century BC. History plus.
But continuing on the search for luggage tags; most shops if they even understood what I was asking for did not have the damn
things. Not even the sure bet bag shop. There was even a full on supermarket down here
where at least I found a combination luggage lock so we could lock up the hand
luggage, but alas no tags.
In the end I gave up and checked our bags in tagless and headed
back upstairs. I bought our tickets
for the airport train ride this evening, despite those pesky “ticket helpers”, and
then headed off down the streets of Rome looking for somewhere to plonk and
relax. The simple prerequisites being drinks and shade.
We sat down at a nearby restaurant but after 10 minutes
without service, gave up and moved on.
We decided to walk to Trevi Fountain again, especially as I
hadn’t yet tossed my obligatory coins in.
Half way there, wouldn’t you know it, we came across another
fountain. Rome is the city of fountains.
