The New Thing Campaign: Versailles and Hemingway

Today we went to Versailles, the stunning palace of Louis XIV. The place is dipped in gold leaf and covered in brocade and velvet, sparkling with glass chandeliers, and packed full of paintings. The palace was crowded, but we had audio guides, and that really helped me to forget the hoards and focus on the finery. I'd been here when I was 17, and I remembered a few things--the gardens in particular. I'd had my picture taken back then in the lap of a Greek god (a statue lounging on a fountain's edge), and I have a clear memory of that. I wanted to take Maria's picture there, but the statues were roped off. Here are some photos of our visit.

I was limping towards the Trianon by the end of our visit. The place is enormous, and I just couldn't walk it all. We'll certainly bring students here next year, but we'll load them on the cheap busses so they don't start a revolution and execute us.

After a nice dinner, we headed for the Latin Quarter to find some Hemingway haunts. We wandered through Shakespeare and Company Books, a reproduction of Sylvia Beach's bookstore frequented by Hemingway and other expats in the 20s. I took some photos and bought a copy of The Sun Also Rises. It was pouring, but we walked to Jardins du Luxembourg, the big park where Hemingway walked frequently on his way to Gertrude Stein's house at 27 rue de Fleurus. This was a thrill for me, but I felt bad dragging our group out on a rainy night. They were real troopers.