When money is no object

We spent Day 8 of the Europe trip visiting the palace of Versailles. The previous post on this series is here..

It was a half day package tour with the driver of a minivan picking us up right outside our Air B&B and driving to Versailles. But the tour did not start till 10:30 in the monring. So we had to eat a heavy breakfast and go. We were to leave Versailles at 5PM and it would be close to 6:30 PM before we would make it back. 

Boo had mentioned that Saravana Bhavan was close to the train station. We checked on google maps and found that it was a 12 minute walk from our place. So off we went and were not disappointed. 

The Saravana Bhavan in Paris is really good. Way better than any of the other ones we have eaten at. By the time we walked back to our hotel, it was time to start. The van for our tour was ready. It was just the four of us and another family of 3 from Riverside. An guy who was much older than me who had a kid same age as Jr. Apparently he had money in Semiconductor hardware and had retired. He was giving me advice on how to follow in his footsteps and I was hoping for some nugget of wisdom and eventually realized that lady luck has to be on your side. 

Anyways, lets get back to Versailles. We went past the Louis Vutton building, Neiully s/ Siene (which appears repeatedly in the Jason Bourne movies) and went along the river and after an hour or more were at Versailles. The approach to the Palace said it all. It was a very hot day in that area and based on the crowds it was going to be a crazy day! and it was...

The driver told us that he will introduce us to our guide and be gone. He would leave exactly at 5 from the same place. We asked him if we would recommend any place to eat and he told us about this crepe place outside the palace. We made a mental note and went with a larger group of 34 people..

The palace is the worst when it comes to front entrace security and crowd control. There were at least a dozen tourguides with their groups all fighting to get in. They had time slots to enter and apparently the entire thing was off by one hour because of delays. Someone fainted because of dehydration in the heat. A Chinese tourguide picked a fight with the security and our tourguide was advising us to stay calm or we would never get in..There was no respite from the sun and we were out there for an hour almost. Finally we got in. 

The entrance to this place is grand as were all the art works and the corridors. Looks like the young king had all the money to dispose of and spared no effort to make this a grand palace. We saw a repeat of a lot of statutes we had already seen at the various museums in Italy and turns out he tired to import the same artists to build him the palace and was not so successful because of his temper tantrums. Our tour guide was annoying and our headsets had so much static that it made our head hurt. So we pretty much started wandering around with the group and just observing. We could get the history later..

We finished through the castle and went into a grand courtyard. This was beautiful as was the garden. 

This garden is huge with some amazing fountains and sculptures. We walked to the garden when we realized there was no water and there were no water fountains inside the Palace. There was water to be bought and ice cream to be had on the other side of the garden if we walked a mile. We walked as fast as we could and had some amazing ice cream and got water bottles. Now that we were ready to walk again, we wandered around the gardens with smiles on our faces.

They should have drinking water in a place like this. Even if they are trying to make money for water, they could at least make it available! we saw so many older people and kids suffering. It was a mixed bag, this Palace trip. A few umbrellas, some occasional shade and some water would have made all the difference. Here are three slide shows of photos from the Palace and gardens. 

After we made it out of the palace, we hit the crepe place. The road outside was much cooler thanks to all the trees that lined the road.

We took pictures while the crepes were being made..

and then had some crepes!

Then we headed back to Paris.

The kids wanted to eat something in the room. So San and me went back to Saravana Bhavan, had our fill and got some stuff for the kids to eat. 

It was an early to bed day because the next day was a tour from 7 to 7 with a hectic schedule.

Paris by night was interesting. We learned that the apartment building we were in was built in 1869! There was a lot of noise within and outside the building.

Good thing we were exhausted and were able to sleep right away!

The palace had great panoramic views.. 

and a video that captures our day in Versailles!

on to Day 9...

Veggie harvest amidst a bunny problem

The planter is giving us results.

Thankfully the rabbits were not able to get to these plants. We have been getting tomato by the ones and twos almost every day for the last month and it has been great! We made Okra curry and sambar with home grown okra and it was yummy.

Only issue was that we would collect 2 or 3 okra a day and store it in the fridge and would wait till we got 30 or so before making something with it. Same thing with the egg plant.

In the meantime the bunny problem is reaching epidemic proportions. There are at least 18-20 bunnies around in the bush behind our house and they have a network of holes dug under the fences on all sides so they can freely travel from backyard to backyard.

The railway tracks behind our house has even more bunnies huddling up. I saw a dead bunny on the road on my way to work Friday!  They are now crossing the roads and getting hit.. not a good sign considering they are not as fast as the squirrels. Sooner or later this is going to cause an accident with a person and at that point hopefully the City of Cupertino will act.

High time they did something. I called and they wanted me to pay and put traps for the bunnies and give the bunnies I catch to animal control. Like I have time for that?!

They should put an ordinance on having bunnies as pets and if releasing orphans into the local parks. Bad idea. They give me grief for trying to plant a Eucalyptus tree or Camphor tree but they ignore the rabbits..

Local governance at work!

Roosengarde Tulips

The perceptive lull in blog posts is due to three things

1. Lot of travel. In the last 21 days have visited Austin, Phoenix, Seattle. While the first two were business trips, the last one was personal. We attended the Ceremonial South Indian Baby Shower for my SIL. It was a fun event with family and friends.

2. The increased travel which translates indirectly to yoga attendance has left me with some vulnerability for hay fever and allergens. Also flights at this season must be notorious for picking up germs. No amount of Emergen-C packets prepared me for the allergy onslaught this week. Had to leave work thursday afternoon and slept through the entire evening. In a fit of determination, went and did Yoga first thing friday morning only to be sent back reeling friday night. Right now the body is on a delicate balance and have waved the white flag with the pollen around Cupertino.

3. There was a lot of photoshopping between sickness and work in the evenings over the last week. Finally got done with that.

While we were in Seattle got a chance to visit Roosengarde, a place for Tulips. We missed the fields of Tulips by 3 days. They did have a few gardens still left uncut and we were lucky enough to get some snaps. Now that my strategy for Photographing landscapes has changed with the Photoshop CS5, you can see the preliminary results ..

More to come, pollen permitting!

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Flowers'r'us - photoblog

A new bunch of flowers in our backyard. One of those bulbs which we planted two years ago.

Somehow this one was not there last year.

We are not complaining. It always makes our day to open the door and find such beauties.

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Weekend Photos

The weekend was spent in San doing a traditional folk dance performance as part of a group of eight, a lot of quiet gardening and Jr. doing a coconut shell decoration.

The dance performance was impressive and so is the organization for which they did the dance. A separate post on India TEAM later.

As for gardening...

and for the artwork..

The week that started with a scare has ended nicely..

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