Chantilly

22 April 2008

Well, we made it! Off to Chantilly this morning and everything we heard about it was true. It is a beautiful country town in a forest setting. It is also one of France's premier places for horse breeding and horse racing. But, of course, today is Tuesday and the one thing we forgot (after warning all of you about it) was that many places are closed on Tuesday (the other half are closed on Monday) and Chantilly pretty much closes down on Tuesday. So, the magnificent chateau was closed as were the stables which are housed in a building that is every bit as elegant as the chateau itself.

The trains on which one travels are often double-deckers not unlike the trains one sees in Sydney. They range from spotlessly clean to absolutely filthy. Here is a picture of one of them. Most trains have maps inside so you can keep track of where you are going.

Oddly enough, this all worked to our advantage as we saw both the stables and the chateau from the outside and had the opportunity to take a long walk through this lovely town.

We returned to Paris on the "slow" train which stopped at just about every place between Chantilly and Paris. The trip out had taken us under twenty minutes but the trip back was just over an hour. One thing we have found on our travels out of the city is that transportation is relatively inexpensive. The trip to Chantilly was about seven euros each, each way.

When we returned we went to our Internet Cafe and while I was checking e-mail Virginia got into a very interesting discussion with the owner who is from Morrocco and who lived for seventeen years in New York. He made the point that we were not tourists, but visitors. I am not quite sure what exactly the distinction is, but I have to say both Virginia and I thought it was a nice one.

Back in Paris we had a bite of lunch and then begain the process of getting ready to return to Australia. It is amazing how much stuff you can accumulate in a month. Later we went up to the Place de Tertre where we sat and had a beer and (as visitors) watched the tourists.