field trips.

more doors. gold everywhere.

our lone boy: drew

my favorite room, the queen's chamber

love love lovin the peacock feather detail

love. this. girl.

of course we had to model on the stairs

uggs at versailles.

the man himself.
nbd, just being crowned queen
friends.
haha.

a really quality group shot.

cute abby.

of course late night empty metro rides = photoshoots

i think that most people would agree that field trips were probably the best part about elementary school. when you live in france, you live in the center of a whole lotta history, so why spend two hours talking about french politics when you could just hop on a train and go see where it all went down? let me tell you, field trips are still the best part of school.

today we headed to Versailles, a city known for it's sumptuous palace and gardens designed by Louis XIV, the man himself, and his architects Le Notre and Le Vau. it all started about a thousand years ago when it was just a little hunting lodge in the middle of nowhere. Turns out it provided some pretty quality hunting so a few different King Louis made their way there and decided to buy and renovate. the renovating has not ever stopped (i think today they said that there was not one room that hasn't been redone at least three times. maybe ten times?) and today Versailles is a serious tourist hot spot. lucky for us, no one was there at about 2 on a thursday afternoon so we had the place to ourselves. this allowed for some pretty inspiring photos.

the palace is truly beautiful. it is ornate and highly decorated. there is gold everywhere. we got to tour the king, queen, and dauphine/dauphin's chambers, the hall of mirrors, and countless other random rooms. i think my favorite was the queens room where 19 royal babies were born, in public, so that there was no discrepancy about them actually being heirs. what a life! Louis really did love things. it was so neat to just be in the actual place where some serious french history happened. i've walked on the floors where countless folk knelt at the king's feet in the throne room (they actually had to bow to the throne even if he wasn't there!), i sat in rooms where marie antoinette dined. wow. today was great.

we also played some french MASH on the train on the way back. so great. i love when our whole group is together, even though we are small. we are all becoming fast friends. we all dined together on some grilled cheese and salad back at our directors house and watched a quality aubrey Hepburn flick. hello weekend.

oh and in case you were wondering: i took 16,009 steps today. thats 7.56 miles. hopefully that means goodbye all those calories from all that bread! so much bread!