My Spring Break Adventure Part 7

PARIS

After our many stops we finally reached our last in Paris,

 Some buildings in Paris.

Okay, so story time. On our first night in Madrid, as we were walking to dinner we passed a movie theater that I later learned was where the Divergent premiere in Spain was. The crazy part was that the stars of the movie were actually there! So, I was closer to seeing the stars of Divergent in Spain than I ever have been in The United States. (On a side note we also saw a protest the first day and then on the last day, the premiere of Spider Man was at the theater just down the street from out hotel and another protest!)

 Notre Dame 

 The oldest clock in Paris(?) (France? The World?)

 This building was where the clock above was located and was the anti-chamber to the guillotine during the French Revolution.

 The River Seine 

 Then, after stopping at our hotel and dinner, we got on the metro and rode out to the Eiffel Tower. Out tour guide didn't tell us where we were going and the metro let out behind a building so as we turned the corner there was the eiffel tower! It was INCREDIBLE! 

 At night, the Eiffel Tower sparkles every hour for like eight minutes and our timing was right to get some normal pictures and some sparking ones! I tried to upload a video that I took but it is not working. :(

 We didn't have enough time to go up the tower that night so instead, we took our boat tour. Below are some pictures from it. Because it was so dark not all of the pictures turned out very well.

My Spring Break Adventure Part 6

After touring Chenonceau, we got back onto our bus and headed to Chambord which was the Kings hunting lodge. It is so large though that many of the rooms are completely empty. There was even one room with large collage pictures of disasters that humans have caused, along with some natural ones as well.

CHAMBORD

 The double helix staircase, there are stairs that start from the end seen in the picture and stairs that start on the opposite side that then wind up to the top of the chateau.

 The view from the middle of the staircase 

 Pictures of the hunting dogs.

 One of the girls and I took a different path and ended up seeing some cool bed rooms.

 Matching wall paper and bed spread! Crazy!

 Chambord was built as the hunting lodge for this guy, Francois I.

 The game room.

 Playing cards with no numbers on them would be quite the challenge. 

 This was Louis XIV ceremonial bedroom. When he was King, he took a lot of power away from nobles and gave them meaningless jobs so they wouldn't notice their lack of power. One other thing that he did to appease them is he allowed them to watch him get up and go to bed. (This was a special thing that very few people got to do so it worked pretty well for him.) This involved them watching from behind the rail to see him get up, get dressed, get shaven and anything else and then the same thing at night. I think that it would be so odd to have people waiting around eagerly to watch me wake up/ go to sleep.

 The queen's bedroom. No watching her waking and sleeping.

 This is from the top of the chateau.

 While looking for a cafe in the Chateau we stumbled upon some cool stuff. 

The carriages...

 The latrines… (So there was an informational board above this that said that this is where the plumbing  was but, toilets were not just used for human waste, they were also used for trash cans. When the disposal was excavated, they found tons of old things that had just been disposed of by tossing them into the toilet. I though that it was really cool!)

 Some statues...

After finishing up at Chambord, we got back on the bus and made a stop at Chartres Cathedral. We were all tired of churches by the time we got here but none the less, it was still really cool.

(There were these yellow fields EVERYWHERE on our drive.)

CHARTRES

 One of the steeples, the one on the right, was built during the Gothic age which is why it lacks decoration. The second was built much later because the church decided that it wanted another. It was built during the Romantic period which is why it is so ornate.  

 This is a piece of fabric that we were told was Mary's. The cool part is, this piece of cloth has survived several fires even when it was right where the fire started. 

 Statues telling the story of Jesus on the inside.

 Because the church burnt so many times, parts of it are newer than other parts. The black part of the side is older than the main alter on the left. It is black because of the fires. Many of us decided that it looked a lot like a movie set because of the drastic contrasts.