October 2018 Cruise – Day 1 & 2

After a month of car events and then a wonderful wedding of our Granddaughter, we boarded a Delta flight for Atlanta late in the morning on Thursday, October 12, Ed’s birthday!

The flight to Atlanta was right on time and we had about an hour extra time after we arrived at the boarding gate for the flight to France.

A perfect flight as we arrived right on time at 6:ooam, France time.  We are 6 hours ahead of our time at home.

We have Comfort Class tickets for all of the flights so that gave us a lot more leg room, still it was hard to sleep on the plane.  

We collected our luggage right away and made it to our waiting car in an hour.  Then it was an hour drive to the hotel, the Renaissance Paris Arc de Triumphed Hotel.  We are 3 blocks from the Arch on a very nice street.

The key to jet lag is to keep on going which we did by getting on a train by the Arch and went to the Palace of Versailles which was an hour away.  

We made it just in time for our guided tour of the Private Apartments of the Louie XV and XVI which was a great 1 ½ hr tour.

What an amazing place.  It is estimated in today’s money, it was built for a cost of 2 billion dollars!!

The famous Hall of Mirrors is 230 feet long by 17 feet wide.  Everything is big here.  Thousands of people lived here with the king.  For instance, one of the kings had 10 children and each child needed 30 people to take care of it.  

The Palace encompasses 721,182 sq ft, had 700 rooms, 1,250 fireplaces and 67 staircases – that is huge.

When we finished there, we took the train back and crashed for a couple of hours.

We were out in the early evening, walked around and ate at a very nice corner restaurant.  Then it was time to go back to the hotel and go to sleep.  Tomorrow after breakfast we meet our friends from London, Marc and Nigel and it will be a fun day.

Night from Paris.

Room with a view

Paris from our balcony

Just one tiny part of the front

The Kings Bed!

Part of the massive gardens

Probably 1/8 of the total buildings!

Dinner - French Onion Soup and Salmon

Dinner on the street corner

The center dome at the shopping center