Chateau de Vaux Le Vicomte outside Paris

Bonjour,

Yesterday, our entire day was a lovely trip to Château de Vaux le Vicomte about 55 kilometers outside of Paris.  We went by a local train, all arranged by Jim Bilbro, and then caught a taxi from Melun out into the countryside.  Once again, the weather was not our friend.  It t was hot as Hades and the dryness of the summer created a dusty pall to everything.  Much of the grass was all but burned up.  The vibrant green of France which is usually so lovely has really been compromised.

Bernie took some great photos and a few from me on my cell phone. If you want to read more about the chateau, here is a good link: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaux-le-Vicomte.  I guess you could say that this chateau is an example of “no good deed goes unpunished.”  It was so extravagant in design and beauty that the king was jealous, turned around and built Versailles and had the architect, Fouquet, arrested. Read about it and you’ll understand. This is a very active chateau, maintained by donations. They have events at Easter, Christmas and dinners in the gardens during the summer. Also a gourmet chocolate festival.

Two funnies that happened in our adventure. Jim was sure that he had purchased round-trip tickets for all of us but such was not the case when we tried to enter the train gate for our departure. We rushed to buy a new round of tickets. A gentleman in the queue latched onto Bernie, trying to be helpful. He was slightly intoxicated, was very loud, and was trying to tell Bernie all about how to navigate the train station as well as Paris. He was a dose too much and got old very fast. He followed us onto the train “voie” or platform. We subtlety and quickly walked two cars up trying to lose him. He followed us and proceeded to sit right across from us on the train. He chatted with Bernie the entire trip back to Paris. He said that he was an architect and had a work VISA for the USA. He kept pulling at Bernie’s shoulder to get his attention and insisted that Jim Bilbro looked just like Bob Dylan!  Anyway, we did our best to avoid him as we were getting off the train and found ourselves running away as quickly as we could. I could see this guy finding his way to our apartment and crashing our little dinner which we had planned with the Bilbros. He lived near the Louvre so would have been on our subway Line 1. We never saw him again, and I joked that he was probably a billionaire. Had we been nicer, we might have benefited!  But we were tired, very hot and ready to get home. A fun, interesting twist to our adventure.

This is my last blog until the final reflection.  Enjoy the pics with captions.

Linda & Bernie