Trip with Jiekai - Part 6
Day 3 - Paris (2/4) - Château de Versailles
supplemented with some of Jiekai's pictures in lieu of mine, which have been lost for eternity due to his cockitude

The top 2 floors of the youth hostel in Paris were fitted with a power saving device that turned off the lights when no one was around. In theory there was no problem with this, and it would save power. However, in practice (as at most of the other youth hostels with such devices) the lights would turn off at weird times. And so I hit my head twice on the low ceiling on the staircase (actually the floor of the top level of the building).


Versailles Facade


Royal Chapel


Upper floor of Royal Chapel

*Ceiling of Royal Chapel*
This picture has been lost for eternity due to Jiekai's cockitude


Versailles Room


Versailles Ceiling. Probably of the Drawing Room - Hercules ascending to heaven.


Bust of Louis XIV (?)


Louis XV


Louis XIV in the classic pose, showing off his toned legs.


Louis XVI


Venus Drawing Room - Louis XIV dressed as a Roman on horseback, without Roman hair.

Versailles was magnificent. I don't think there's another palace that can match up to it in the world. Hampton Court and the Vienese palaces can't compare (but then again those countries didn't go bankrupt).


A walk down the Hall of Mirrors


Hall of Mirrors wall

*The Hall of Mirrors*
This picture has been lost for eternity due to Jiekai's cockitude
Unfortunately, half of the Hall of Mirrors was still closed for restoration.


Hall of Mirrors ceiling


Painting


Mercury Drawing Room - Louis Philippe's Bed

*Louis XIV in Royal Array*
This picture has been lost for eternity due to Jiekai's cockitude

*Apollo Salon*
This picture has been lost for eternity due to Jiekai's cockitude

*Migand/Miganl (?) Salon*
This picture has been lost for eternity due to Jiekai's cockitude


Ceiling


Painting


Crowning of the Empress Josephine, in the Coronation room, by Jacques-Louis David (I forgot if this was a copy)


Acclamation of Napoleon as Emperor


Painting

*Queen's Chamber*
19 Royal children were born here
This picture has been lost for eternity due to Jiekai's cockitude

*The Childhood of Jupiter on Mount Ih (?) Coypel, in the guard room*
This picture has been lost for eternity due to Jiekai's cockitude

For conveying emotions, photographs are really inferior to paintings. With paintings you get to capture romanticised, stylised scenes and events. You play with light sources, get to ripple flesh and muscles the exact way you want, change the emphases at will. With photography you're limited to capturing what actually can be seen (photoshop notwithstanding, but that's different already). It really can't compare to working from scratch on a piece of canvas.

Napoleon used to keep a mullet. Now I know why Jiekai is keeping one.

The bloody toilet in Versailles cost €0.50 (to add insult to injury I got change in the form of 4 €0.10 and 2 €0.05 coins). Consider that you already pay for the attraction (a day pass for the whole complex is €20) and it's really ridiculous. They'll recoup the cost of restoration in no time.


Napoleon statue


Bougainville


Josephine

Unfortunately, admission to the King's Apartments and the Dauphin and Dauphine's chambers was not included in the Paris Museum pass we'd gotten (I'd gotten a 2 day pass for €30 and Jiekai a 4 day one for €45 - I think I barely earned the money back because student prices are below adult ones, and Jiekai definitely got his money's worth), so we had to shell out another €5,50 (IIRC). The audioguide was free this time, but I declined to get one: among other things, my feet hurt. Most importantly, I was ready to give Jiekai a chance to talk (ie Summarise the audioguide) when someone was actually interested, instead of, like my brother-in-law, droning on when it was obvious that nobody was. He then threw a fit and I left him since he didn't want to visit the gardens and I did.




This is a symbol of the marriage of Maria Theresa of Spain to Louis XIV

The King's Apartments were less decorated than the State Apartments (perhaps they ran out of money, or the private chambers weren't needed to impress foreign dignitaries and so were kept simple), but the comparatively understated design was a relief after the sheer grandeur of the State Apartments. I also liked the green colour schemes of the Dauphin/Dauphine's apartments. I missed having paintings on the ceilings, though.

*Louis XV in costume. Belle, 1723*
This picture has been lost for eternity due to Jiekai's cockitude
Partial image:


Drapings


Gardens from Palace


Random bust


Painting


Bust


Painting


Room


Painting


Painting. Louis XV in costume by Belle, 1723?!


Cock
The only reason this is here is because otherwise I won't have a shot of the facade of the Chateau


The receipt for the Metro in Paris and the Versailles ticket counter both had the equivalent prices in Francs. Wah.

PRCs are everywhere in Europe.


Cock files:

- I had to tell him to get off when we reached the right stop more than once (and again in Vienna)
- After I told him to get off the train, he stupidly stood by the door of the train car. After 1 1/2 days in Paris, it didn't occur to him that you needed to jerk the handle on the train door to open it.
- In a feat of unparalleled stupidity (at least until he lost my memory card for eternity due to his cockitude) he caused us to inadvertently cheat on the Paris metro train fare by getting us off at the wrong station in Zone 4, not Zone 3 where our 3-day passes qualified us to travel to. After I found an open gate by which we could sneak out, he went to the counter and while buying a ticket for the way back he told the person that we'd travelled further than we were entitled to. Luckily, we didn't get fined.
- He walked past the audioguide desk at Versailles despite my pointing it out to him
- Despite visiting Versailles, he didn't walk through the excellent gardens despite my remark that they were Unparalleled Gardens for an Unparalleled Idiot ('jardins inégalés, pour un idiot inégalé'), primarily because he didn't want to pay another €5,50, even though he thought it was only €3. He claimed he'd seen most of them from the windows of the Palace.
- He turned on Digital Zoom on his camera

NUS is more funky than I thought.

I saw multiple english translations of the Book of the Dead in the Utrecht library, and multiple Coffin Texts also. I searched LINC on a whim and hey presto:

Ritual of the mystery of the judgement of the soul : from an ancient Egyptian papyrus / Translated and edited by M. W. Blackden.

Books of the dead : manuals for living and dying / Stanislav Grof.

The papyrus of Ani : a reproduction in facsimile / Edited, with hieroglyphic transcript, translation and introduction, by E. A. Wallis Budge.

The Tibetan book of the dead ; or, The after-death experiences on the Bardo plane, according to Lama Kazi Dawa-Samdup's English rendering . Compiled and edited by W. Y. Evans-Wentz.

Death and the college student . A collection of brief essays on death and suicide by Harvard youth . Edited by Edwin S. Shneidman. Foreword by Dana L. Farnsworth.

Eight decisive books of antiquity.

Unfortunately most of them are on the Closed Stacks.

Trip with Jiekai - Part 5
Day 2 - Paris (1/4) - Army Museum, Arc de Triomphe de l'Etoile, Eiffel Tower
supplemented with some of Jiekai's pictures in lieu of mine, which have been lost for eternity due to his cockitude

We then proceeded to the Army Museum, where there was lots of splendid armour. Yet, I've seen so much armour over the years (and there was simply so much in the museum) that it got a bit boring, even though I'm one of the few people who are interested in and care about the difference between the Italian and Gothic styles of armour making.


Knight on horse


Armour


Samurai armour


Knight on horse


Maybe a Turkish horse warrior

*Armour related to Louis XIII*
This picture has been lost for eternity due to Jiekai's cockitude

They had some weird armoured hats (not your typical cavalier helmet, but literally a hat made of iron). And the Islamic-style helmets were called "turban helmets". Damn, I should've guessed.

*Helmets with noses*
Now *these* I have never seen before
This pictures have been lost for eternity due to Jiekai's cockitude


Guns


Lancing armour
I had a better version but it's been lost for eternity due to Jiekai's cockitude


Gun detail

For some reason the Hotel des Invalides, built as a lodge for wounded soldiers, had a moat surrounding it. Uhh. Maybe veterans were real unpopular in those days.


Alexander III bridge. This is a very chio bridge.


Simon Bolivar - a 19th century terrorist


We shall never surrender (unlike the French)
Ironic statue found opposite the Grand Palais.

Taking the Metro to the Arc de Triomphe de l'Etoile, we passed Franklin D. Roosevelt station. The damn recorded voice on the Metro, showing an utter lack of respect for the man, pronounced it as "Fwah'klorh Roos Fay" (ie They pronounced his name the French way). When I go back to Singapore I'm going to visit Clement Chow Avenue and Beau Liao Road (Jer Voice Road doesn't count since he wasn't French).


Arc de Triomphe
They were having a ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier when we arrived, so we had to wait a bit.


Tomb of the Unknown Soldier


Sculpture at the base of the arch

About this time, Jiekai's camera ran out of batteries. There are thus no pictures of the view from the top of the Arch, of the Eiffel Tower at night, or the view from the Tower itself.

At the top of the Arch there were those telescope things allowing you to look at things far away. Unfortunately they cost an exorbitant €1.

*View from the top of the Arch, with the Basilica of the Sacred Heart in the background*
This picture has been lost for eternity due to his cockitude

*Picture of weird sign at the Arch*
If I recall correctly, among the things banned in/on top of the Arch, there were the usual suspects: smoking, eating and drinking. There were also other weirder ones like listening to loud music (they showed a figure with a stereo on his shoulders) and especially a picture of a figure in what appeared to be swimming trunks. I have no idea why anyone would want to visit the Arch in swimwear.
This picture has been lost for eternity due to his cockitude

Addendum:

Here is a picture of the last from Natalie Tran:


Exiting the arch, we came across many Muslim men selling bric a brac. One had put a radio on the pavement from which Bhangra music was blaring. 3 Disney figurines were dancing to the music (Mickey Mouse, Minnie and one more). I asked the guy how they worked, and if the figurines had batteries, and he said it was the magnets serving as the figurines' feet; I pondered for a while but was unable to see how the music powered the magnets, for surely after a while the magnets would settle into a equilibrium position and the figurines would stop jumping (I highly doubt that a Muslim bric-a-brac hawker on the streets of Paris has discovered the secret of creating a perpetual motion machine). There were also one or two Muslim men selling Ah Beng souvenirs of the Eiffel Tower - picture the Eiffel Tower standing on a base from which a light which rapidly changes colour flashes, and one Muslim man selling those plastic figurines you throw onto a wall which will slowly flip down.

Tired after a long day (it was 7+ and we hadn't had dinner, and weren't until we left the Eiffel Tower), I entered a McDonalds near the arch to recharge on a Coke. Amazingly, even though 10 counters were open, each line had a minimum of 7 people, and everyone queueing up was French. I am so reminded of the hamburger scene in the Pink Panther (2006). Looks like the French farmers need to dump more manure on the streets of Paris.

Queueing up for Eiffel Tower tickets, we were suddenly greeted, at 9pm, with many white lights suddenly flashing in turn all over the surface of the Eiffel Tower, in a display calculated to induce epileptic fits in Parisian children. I then realised how the people selling Ah Beng Eiffel Tower souvenirs had gotten the idea (or maybe it was the reverse). The 1812 overture also came to me, as I was put in the mind of V for Vendetta. Thankfully, the epilepsy-inducing lighting came to an end at 9:15, but unfortunately it was repeated at 10pm, 11pm and midnight. There was also a spotlight circling the city of Paris from the top of the Eiffel Tower, like the all-seeing eye of Sauron. The best part was that just before the spotlight hit one building, it would light up first, in a typically French (read: pretentious) manner.

*View from the 2nd floor of the Eiffel tower, with the Basilica of the Sacred Heart in the distance*
This picture has been lost for eternity due to Jiekai's cockitude

*View from the 2nd floor of the Eiffel tower, of the Champ de Mars*
This picture has been lost for eternity due to Jiekai's cockitude

Sign at the top of the Eiffel Tower: "The Eiffel Tower is a unique monument. Please respect it. No graffiti please". Of course, it didn't work.

*View from the 3rd floor of the Eiffel tower, with the Triumphal Arch in the top left*
This picture has been lost for eternity due to Jiekai's cockitude

There was a couple French kissing on the top floor of the Eiffel Tower. How romantic.

I managed to get handphone reception on the top of the Eiffel Tower, unlike the Empire State Building. Whee.

Just for kicks, Jiekai and I decided to walk down from the 2nd to the 1st floor of the Eiffel Tower. Along the way, we discovered some cunningly-placed information panels, installed in 1989 (the monument's 100th anniversary), which the spoilt people who take the lift down don't get to see! We also saw a painter mannequin perched on one pylon (gah); even worse was how the bottom of the lifts had a mannequin of a lift operator hanging to the controls.

The restaurant on the first floor of the Eiffel Tower was not as overpriced as I expected it to be. €21.50 got you a 3 course meal. But then again, since you've to pay maybe €3 to ascend just to the first floor in the first place (the third floor costs €11 and the second €7), I doubt people would be happy to be fleeced yet again.

On exiting the Eiffel Tower, we were immediately swarmed with 10 Muslim men selling Ah Beng Eiffel Tower souvenirs. Wah lao. They were really desperate to sell their wares - one halved his initial price after only a short, non-commital line from me.

By the time we exited the Eiffel Tower, it was 11:30 or so. Desperate for food, we went to an Italian restaurant ("Iolanda") near the Tower, which was surprisingly alright. They had a bottle of wine on the table - "Tavernello Merlot", billed as the "#1 brand in Italy" (yeah right).

The restaurant cunningly used one of those half past six pseudo-cloth napkins - too thick to be thin paper napkins that are easily tearable, yet not of good enough quality to be reused and rewashed (with sufficient strength, they can be torn). Their cheap tricks don't work on me, hah! I'm not sure why restaurants use them - maybe it's to give a touch of class without the expense of real cloth napkins that can be washed.

At 12:30pm, cafes near the hostel were still making fresh crepes. What a wonderful city.

I did a very stupid thing at the hostel - I stuck a wet sock over the opening of a hair dryer and turned it on. Luckily it worked again the next day. Maybe it was a lousy hairdryer - 2/4 of the power sockets in our room didn't work, and the shower stall door couldn't close properly.


The Paris metro is even more complicated than the Tube, since it also intersects with the RER (suburban train lines).

At one newsstand there was a big poster advertising a porn magazine, and token Xs covered the areolae of the models (they were not big enough to hide all of the brown, however). I didn't think porn was advertised so openly elsewhere in the world outside of Amsterdam's red light district and pseudo-red light district (I would later find a nearly as brazen display in Vienna). Gotta love these Europeans.

Smoking in French is "Fumeur" "fumer". How appropriate.

There's a lot of focus, in Paris, about the period from 1789-1815 (ie the Revolutionary and Napoleonic periods). They seem ashamed of the Ancien Régime, and the long string of French defeats (eg 1871).

Vending machines in some Metro stations sold their drinks for less than in others (€1.50 for 500ml of Pepsi or Pepsi Max, instead of €1.80). This was very odd, since the ones I looked at were all of the same type and maintained by the same company. I've never seen such obvious price discrimination.


Cock files:

- He walked past the entrance of the Conciergerie
- He played with the telescope on the 2nd floor of the Eiffel Tower, swinging it around as he made machine-gun noises
- He paranoidly refused to talk to any strangers (even one who came up to us and asked if we needed any help and might not have been after alcohol money). He also got agitated when I talked to one of the Ah Beng Eiffel Tower souvenir merchants. He obviously thought they would beat me up if I didn't buy their wares, sub-machine gun toting gendarmes patrolling the base of the Eiffel Tower notwithstanding. Either that or call down a whole gang to ass-rape him. I should get him one of those tinfoil hats.

Trip with Jiekai - Part 4
Day 2 - Paris (1/4) - Conciergerie, Sainte Chapelle, Napoleon's Tomb (Hotel des Invalides)
supplemented with some of Jiekai's pictures in lieu of mine, which have been lost for eternity due to his cockitude

We then visited the Conciergerie, a former Revolutionary and Monarchical prison.


Expiation Chapel, formerly the cell of Marie Antoinette
I had a better version, but it's been lost for eternity due to Jiekai's cockitude


Cell for richer Conciergerie inmates - they got beds.


Women's courtyard in the Conciergerie, Paris

Somehow had raved excitedly to me about the Conciergerie, but personally I wasn't too enthused about the place. Among other reasons, my feet hurt, I'm not a French Revolution buff, almost everything was in French, the place was poorly and confusingly signposted and laid out and there wasn't much to see both in terms of artefacts and in terms of how much of the place you can see; I'm sure much more of the area than was public exists and is historically significant (for example, almost everything related to the Revolution - what about how the place was used in Monarchical times?) - even Jiekai, a Revolution buff, was disappointed. Hell, even the facade of the place was unimpressive, and the entrance hardly marked and tucked away at one corner, below street level.


Sainte Chapelle exterior


A walk through Sainte Chapelle


Sainte Chapelle altar

Pictures truly cannot do Sainte Chapelle justice. It must be the most elaborately decorated place of worship I've ever seen, with gold gilt everywhere, thanks to its use as a royal chapel. The stained glass is beautiful (and the sunlight that day didn't hurt).

*Picture of an angel with wings being tortured (?)*
Jiekai, a "quasi-Catholic", called this "S&M of a Saint", angel wings notwithstanding


Hotel des Invalides

We then proceeded to the Hotel des Invalides where, among other things, Napoleon is buried. Walking down the boulevard to the building itself, you get a great feeling of grandeur.




Courtyard


Statue of Napoleon


Interior of the Soldiers' Church


At one part of the ticketing centre there were shelves of cute soldier miniatures from the Celtic period to 1792. There was a very cute one of a soldier with a huge hammer.


Tomb of Napoleon
I had a better version but it's been lost for eternity due to Jiekai's cockitude


Dome


Altar


Outfit Napoleon wore on St Helena


Tomb of St Jerome


Sword Napoleon used at Austerlitz


Sword Napoleon used at the Battle of the Pyramids (IIRC)


Why this tomb has Arabic letters on it, I do not know


Turene (?)


Napoleon's Tomb


Cock


Cock


Sculpture commemorating the Napoleonic code


Napoleon standing over the remains of Napoleon II (according to Jiekai)


Marshal Foch


Coronation of Napoleon - in miniatures


Joseph Napoleon's tomb


Facade of Napoleon's tomb


It was great to get free public toilets again in Paris.

Many (all?) of the cars in the Paris subway have big rubber wheels. This means that the so-called Metro is really just a glorified underground bus service instead of being a real subway.

From Friday evening till mid-afternoon on Saturday, all we heard was French music (in contrast to the rest of Europe, where music in English is widely listened to). And then we heard our first song in English - Celine Dion's "My Heart Will Go On". Bah.

One of the mysteries of life - why're batteries so much more expensive in Europe than in Asia (more so than other products)?