Week Eight: Paris

For the last free weekend of study abroad trip I went with some friends to Paris. Paris is somewhere I have always wanted to go and see, mainly just because it's so popular and so many people go there to see the Eiffel Tower. We stayed in an Air BnB That was just a 5 minute walk from the Eiffel Tower. On our first day we Went to the Palace of Versailles. This was a palace That was built by the French King Louis XVI in the 17th century. The palace was huge and very beautiful. I do not really understand why the kings Spent so much money on having very extravagant living quarters, I could think of a lot better uses for my money than having five different bedrooms.  

Outside the Palace was the gardens, which I enjoyed much more than the palace itself. The garden is so large that you can rent bikes or golf cart rides to make it all the way to the other end. The garden was mostly made out of big bushes that were around 2 stories high. Amongst the rows of bushes there were many openings that had little fountains and music playing. My favorite water feature was a little pond that had and a bunch of jets in the middle that created and water show that went along to the music. At the end of the garden there is a long skinny body of water called the "Grand Canal". King Louis called himself the Sun God and he wanted everyone to believe he could control nature. That is why he created this huge garden surrounded by big lakes. Also he planted tropical fruits in his garden that normally would not be able to grow in France.

 

Garden of Versailles

Sunday morning we went on a group walking tour. Our tour guide was a history fan, and he definitely told us way more history than any of our previous history guides have. We only saw a few famous sites but he told us so much about then that I feel like we got a lot out of the tour.  He told us how when the Palace of Versailles was built, the government decided to only tax the poor, and didn't raise the taxes on any of the noblemen.  This caused the majority of the citizens of Paris to go into extreme poverty, and ultimately was one of the first causes of the French Revolution.

After the walking tour was over we walked down to the financial district of Paris. It was full of tall skyscrapers, but they weren't anything like the skyscrapers in America. They all had some interesting design to them, and everything seemed very futuristic. There was a big open park area connecting all of these buildings and it was full of kids playing and adults hanging out.  We saw a building that looked like a big arch, so we walked up to see what it was. It ended up being a campus of one of the universities in Paris, and it looked like the whole campus was inside that huge arch shaped building. 

          Paris Financial District