03/25/2026: Palace of Versailles

One of the more interesting days. Parting ways with my mom in the morning, you could tell we were due for some rain. I went out on the city in my new outfit styled by Elie from Devred, and started off the day in search for an umbrella so I wouldn't get soaked. Around the time I get to the bridge connecting I think Ile Saint-Louis, I noticed the heel of my shoe biting into my achilles which would drive me to buy socks early on. Funny story about the umbrella too, when I initially started looking for socks I ended up outside this one store that didn't open til about 10am and there was a group of kids that looked about my age if not a little younger out. Maybe it was the older brother of the group, but he talked me into buying him and his folks a blanket and a speaker in exchange for their umbrella. On paper it doesn't sound like the best deal, but it didn't hurt to help them in the long run. The umbrella did come in handy though. I was walking with a limp because of my shoes all day! I also had a planned rendezvous with my high school French professor/8th grade football coach Mr. Sommers. Sommers is the man! I always liked French, but his two years teaching me really made me invested, and there's so much I want to do with the language now. Coincidentally, he moved back to France after I graduated high school, so this meet up was well in the works. We ate at L'Auberge de la Reine Blanche where I had escargot for the first time. It was a nice restaurant, believed it was founded by a Moroccan guy. The dude's portrait was above us and we kept cracking up reading what was signed on there. Before meeting with Sommers I took a stroll in the Garden of Luxembourg to kill time. This was around when the wind started to pick up. After departing lunch, I hobbled over to the metro station and caught a train out west for my 4:00pm ticket to Palace of Versailles. It was either this or a last minute day trip to Mont Saint Michelle. Getting off the train, the sun is shining and it appears the clouds are rolling away. The closer I got to the hill that led up to the Palace, it was as if an ominous force was upon us. Sleet rain down from the sky as I walked against the wind with my umbrella trying to protect me and my outfit. In the video, the sound of the wind in the audio as well as how much my locs were being blown back are a good indicator of how strong the gust was. My umbrella broke and became a designated cane for the rest of the trip. When I finally got back to the garden, the sun began to come out from behind the clouds, but the wind never really let up. The ground was muddy, but everyone was surrounded by the beauty that was the Palace of Versailles. I spent most of my time on the left side of the garden, and I was left in awe of the fountains, statues, and just how tall the foliage was around me. I even got to explore Le Basquet de la Reine (The Queen's Basket), which inspired Pokemon X/Y's Parfum Palace's Furfrou maze. My first play-through of Pokemon Y I got stuck on that part, and that's what led to me putting that game down and sticking with Alpha Sapphire. Leaving the palace, I explored a bit of the town and walked away with a nice map from the Versailles Tourists Office. I pushed my luck with food and sat down in a restaurant only to find out their kitchen was closed for the day, so I left with some Japanese soda or something. Funny enough, I left my umbrella in here and had to go back and get it. I walked through some plaza where there was this funny figure of Z Brolly palming ssj Goku by the face too. Before getting on the train back to Paris, I picked up some gummy worms and Cheetos from a vending machine to hold me over. I found it so interesting reading the ingredients of the snacks and seeing how there was a health rating for them, as well as highlighting where certain colors come from. For example the blue in the gummy worms came from spirulina. On the train back to Paris, I fell asleep and ended up missing my station by about 4 stops. Waiting out in the cold for another train to go back the opposite direction sucked. Eventually though, I got back to the hotel and stopped at the McDonald's in Bastille.