Before we get to China though, we have to connect through Paris. We stayed one more day in Paris. This one was planned though, so it wasn’t as stressful. We planned on going to Versailles, as it is one of the few attractions that we hadn’t seen yet.

We took the train (subway) to get to Versailles. It was bloody expensive, and then the train workers were on strike that day! It was the biggest mess. We didn’t know what train to take because they were running only a few trains and they were on different tracks than their normal routes. We finally got the right train and made it to Versailles.

It was not too bad of a price to get in, except that if you wanted to see all of Versailles: the palace, the grounds, Marie Antoinette’s house, and there might have been one more area — you had to pay 10-20 Euros each place. We just visited the palace. I would have liked to see the grounds, but it was a cold, rainy day, and wouldn’t have been pleasant at all.

This was a very extravagant palace. I haven’t been to very many palaces in my life, but this one would be hard to beat. Everything was gold, or covered in gold, or with gold accents. The walls were covered with beautiful tapestry wallpaper, not paper, but cloth. It was very beautiful.

There was a very nice chapel area, which you could look into but not enter. There were beautiful ceiling frescos, and famous artworks, and statues of famous French nobles. There were a lot of paintings of the royal family.

The grounds through the window looked amazing. A lot of the grounds are still forest, as it was used for hunting.

After seeing Versailles we headed back to the airport. Again, the trains were a pain in the butt. After seeing Versailles, I honestly don’t have anywhere else in Paris I care about going to. I think it’s an outrageously expensive city to visit, and I don’t really want to go back again. Why should it be the tourist capital of the world? I would much rather go back to Italy and explore more of Florence and Rome before ever going back to Paris. In Paris, every place is almost a disappointment. Especially for the money it all costs. I recommend the Louvre, but don’t get your hopes up about the Mona Lisa… you won’t get to see her very well anyway in the crowd of 400 people and she’s very small. If you want to see Europe, skip Paris and visit somewhere nice instead.

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We decided to go explore a little more of France (not stay in Paris, unless we wanted to completely destroy our budget). After coming up with a plan, we walked outside of our hotel and looked for some food, and we also visited the Arc de Triomphe, which happened to be very near to our hotel. One more of Paris’ sights crossed off. It’s a large arch… surprising large… and commemorates one of Rome’s victories.

On Monday we visited the US Embassy. I was excited because I’d never been to an Embassy before. I thought that the Embassy would be very plush and beautiful, like visiting the White House.

We got inside and it looked just like a government office. A large crowd of people sitting on uncomfortable chairs, waiting for their number to be called, so that they can meet with one of the people standing behind the windows.

We were able to skip the really long lines since we were American citizens. We were there for a while, but in the end Josh was able to get an emergency passport and we were able to continue on our way to South Africa that evening! It only took an hour to get a passport in France, when it takes weeks to get one in the USA. Haha.

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Josh and I made our way off of the boat and to the metro station, where we traveled to the Amsterdam airport. It is a very large building, working as an airport, a mall, and a metro station. We had at first thought about going into Amsterdam and seeing a few things, but by the time we had gotten to the airport and situated, I was tired and figured, why not just take a break and catch up some on my blogging. I had seen enough cities and metros and I was done with Europe.

The airport was nice though, Josh and I walked through the mall area for some exercise, and to see what was there. Then we hung out in the lounge for a few hours.

Our flight was fine to Paris, where we were connecting to South Africa on Air France. When we arrived at the Paris Airport, several Air France personnel met us and the other international connections to escort us to the correct terminal. It was very interesting, as we all marched through the hallways of the airport, finally reaching Passport control and security. Josh and I got to our gate and then started boarding the flight. I went through the check-in gate, then Josh started to go through, but on looking at his passport, the woman stopped him and had him step aside.

Josh’s passport is very full. So full, in fact, that there was not one whole free page left. He had looked up the visa requirements to all the countries that we were traveling to, and there hadn’t been a problem with it. Unfortunately, Air France had a problem with someone’s passport flying to South Africa before. South Africa requires a full blank page in a passport, apparently. Otherwise they send back the passengers on the same plane they came on, and Air France gets fined as well.

Josh did have several pages that had only one stamp on them, and Josh was hoping that would be alright. A passport control man, who was very nice, was trying to get a hold of the South African customs office, but they wouldn’t answer, and we never got the go-ahead from them.

The door to the plane closed, and our plane took off without us. All that the Air France personnel and the passport officer could tell us to try was going to the US Embassy to see if there could be additional pages added to Josh’s passport. It was Saturday night though, so there was no way to get anything done until Monday. We were stuck.

The nice passport man ended up walking us back through the airport to the place where they had dumped Josh’s checked bag, and then out to where the airport hotel was. We checked the price though, and it was ridiculous! 289 Euros a night!

We found another hotel just outside the airport for 98 Euros a night and went to bed.

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