Paris de l’Europe: Versailles

As I write this I’m sitting in a restaurant beside the Grand Canal at Versailles, waiting for the gardens to open for the evening fireworks. I've managed to do a little bit of work today (my plan for Paris was to do half a day of work, and sightsee the rest of the time), which so far has kind of worked.

Day one, I wore my new sandals and did a few hours work by the Louvre. Then I went to buy sticking plasters for my sore feet and went back to my hostel (where they seem to have given me a two person room with ensuite, which is nice, especially as there was no one else there the last two nights I spent there). I decided to call off my Eiffel Tower trip to give my feet a chance to heal, and did some more work at one of the tables in my room (there are two tables).

Day two was Versailles. I'd managed to figure out how to get the normal travel card to add to my collection (‘Navigo', cheaper than the tourist one, but it only runs Monday- Sunday), and caught the métro and then the RER train out to Versailles, where a lot of people were also going. It was a warm day, and I was extremely glad I had bought timed tickets for the palace, which meant I could just show up at the door at a time of my choosing rather than spend an hour or more waiting in the sun to get in. I got a coffee, madeleine and salad, did some work at a café with many separate named rooms to eat in (I chose one with sparkly gold panels) and then presented myself at the palace at 1pm. Apparently you sometimes wait up to thirty minutes even with timed tickets, but I got straight in, went through security and picked up my audio guide (I'm a big fan of audio guides - otherwise you get sore eyes reading all the labels on things, and it also means I don't feel I need to read ALL THE LABELS which can get a bit over-the-top).

The palace, is, of course, amazing. I was a bit disappointed with the plain decor in the first few rooms detailing the history of the palace, but then we got to the main rooms and the effect (and amount) of gold and muralling and sculpted ceilings was just incredible. I've visited a few castles this trip where they said the king/queen etc had wanted to imitate Versailles, and it was completely clear why. The Hall of Mirrors is enormous and beautifully filled with mirrors (of course) and chandeliers and rich paintings and marble (marble is everywhere). There are more rooms, smaller but similarly richly decorated, and then you get to the vast Hall of Battles, with its skylight running the length of the room and expansive paintings detailing more than thirty great French military victories in chronological order from about 700.

I wandered through the gardens a little and enjoyed a musical fountain, then visited Marie Antoinette's Petit Trianon (her small house which, while quite small compared to the palace, is a lot bigger than my house). She ordered an English garden alongside the house, which meant excavations to make little hills and valleys and planting of trees to make it look 'wild', and also a working farm and accompanying tiny village. It reminded me a bit of Hobbiton, especially with its lake and rolling hills, and the idea of a constructed pastoral scene. I also saw two otters, which are quite different from the Malaysian otters I've seen in zoos in NZ.

After dinner (aforementioned) I went back into the gardens for the night fountains and fireworks, which you have to pay extra for but which I think was worth it. It runs on Saturday nights in summer, and you wander through the gardens in the dusk light enjoying baroque music (I think) and enjoying the fountains, some of which are decorated in smoking dry ice and coloured lights. I think my favourite fountains were the colonnade fountain (dry ice and lasers in a ring of pillars), the Mirror Fountain (the fountain spouts move! I want to know if they moved in Louis XIV's days) and the Ball grove, which had fire a waterfalls with lights in them, as well as dry ice. Apparently there is no water source at Versailles, so the amount of engineering needed to make all the fountains work is quite incredible, especially done centuries ago. Much, if not all, of the piping is original.

The finale was a fireworks and flame show by Groupe F, with a line of flaming torches going off in patterns up the main 'perspective' as well as fireworks, all to music. Louis XIV probably would have enjoyed it.

Then it took two hours to get back to the hostel, half an hour of which was spent packed on a train waiting to leave Versailles (people clapped when the train finally started to move). But it was worth it.

Sweden! Uppsala

I'm sitting in a train on the way to Stockholm after spending the week in Uppsala, a small city north of Stockholm. It's just past midsummer, so it never really gets dark and - OH I JUST SAW A STEAM TRAIN, puffing its way across a bridge with olde carriages. Here is the steam train:

Now we are going really fast past a lot of fields, definitely faster than Sydney trains and much faster than NZ trains. Anyway, I’ve been in Uppsala at a conference (which was good), and in the meantime have been wandering around the older parts of the city, which has a canal, lots of cobblestones, many many bikes and very few cars. We had 30 degrees ones day, which I was not prepared for, but then it fell to 17 the next day so I suppose it balanced out.

Uppsala also has the largest cathedral in Scandinavia, with construction starting in the 13th century and several rebuilds since. The stone interior has been painted with beautiful repeating patterns of flowers and other motifs, different in every small chapel to the sides of the cathedral, which at first I thought was original, but then found out it was repainted in the twentieth century, so more in the spirit of the original. It made me think about buildings as living, and wonder why many of the buildings from the English reformation haven't been renewed - perhaps to do with continuity of use and political stability, as well as displaying the scars of the past.

Eating out in Sweden is quite expensive, apparently due to the high tax on luxuries. There are lots of restaurants beside the canal that runs through the city, looking out to the water and the small bridges that cross, some decked out with flowers. The route from my hotel to the conference venue took me along the canal, beneath the castle (pink), along cobbled streets around the cathedral, and past some grand old apartment houses (one painted sky blue). People in Sweden tend to live in apartment houses in cities in Sweden, with parks nearby and a very compact form with fields not far from the centre of town. There are trees everywhere and rough paths through the parks which gives everything a sort of half-wild quality. Linnæus of the botanical scientific naming system lived and worked in Uppsala, so there are lots of references to him - cafés, a tourist walk, and of course his house and garden. We went through the garden beds where he cultivated a whole host of different plants, for instance about ten types of thistle in one bed, laid out by genus and Latin name.

Dinner one night was in the state hall at the castle, which we found out later is not generally accessible to the public. It's a huge space, with a musicians gallery around one corner, and long tables with candelabra. The waiters were extremely well-rehearsed, at one point carrying in silver platters of icecream over one shoulder, turning to stand in a line with military precision and lighting the flares sticking out of the icecream. We were also treated to some musical comedy (spex) by a male choir with their mascot, Flora the cow skull. They'd chatted to one of my colleagues outside and now asked for her to come up to the stage so they could sing her a love song, but she hid so they asked for volunteers, and ended up singing their song to a guy, with much feeling.

As I write this last bit I'm in a train on the way to Copenhagen at 200km an hour, passing fields and forests, red farmhouses and little lakes. The weather's beautiful, with blue skies and a crisp morning. I'll get onto my Stockholm adventures in the next post :)

A Year in the UK and meeting authors (squee!)

Today is the one-year anniversary of my arrival in the UK. It's kind of scary to think about. Time goes past so fast.

In the last year I have learnt to ride the underground like a natural-born Londoner (hmm. As I write that, I am reminded of two occasions in the past week when I stood on toes because I wasn't holding on. I had to turn my page! It was necessary! And the train braked at just the wrong time). I've decided that the most important things to do on the Underground are to keep moving (even if you go in the wrong direction. Turning on the spot is much better than standing still) and to memorise the best doors for each station.

I've learnt to carry an umbrella with me wherever I go. I've learnt to dress in proper layers, with a coat and everything. I've shopped in huge stores and caught trains to different countries and tackled the banking system. I've been to Germany and France and Wales and Northern Ireland (and will be going to Turkey soon! Stay tuned!). I've had a proper English Christmas dinner and snow and seen squirrels. Lots and lots of squirrels.

I've witnessed the preparations for the Queen's Jubilee (something faintly scary about the union jack EVERYWHERE. And apparently we will have bunting for our jubilee party next weekend. BUNTING). I've seen the changing of the guard. I've been stuck multiple times on the Underground and taken the slow roller coaster that is the DLR. I've been to a reception at Parliament and stood on either side of the Greenwich Mean Line and watched Shakespeare in the Globe Theatre. I have got tickets to the Olympics and the Paralympics.

And this week I have had a barbecue in the back garden and discussed the possibility of there being a WWII bomb shelter under the patio and watched Eurovision (interesting. Veeeerrry interesting). And yesterday I went to see Cassandra Clare and Maureen Johnson in Stratford, which was hilarious and involved discussions of cannibal ducks and kittens and putting your friends into your books. Sarah Rees Brennan was also there and I managed to get books signed by all of them. I also managed not gush too much when SRB said she liked my necklace (she likes my necklace! She does!), or tell her how I was once four hours late to work because I had to finish her book...

It's nice meeting authors. You can be sure they're real people, and not just internet/publishing industry secret conspiracy inventions.

Old and New and SQUIRRELS

I’m sitting writing this in a park and two squirrels behind me are racing round and round and round various trees. They make a strange kind of sound, a bit like someone shaking a plastic bottle of water, as their claws dig into the bark. I think they’re just playing rather than one chasing the other in mortal combat (who knows what a squirrel-in-terror expression looks like?). The sun was out a while ago, but it’s been hidden behind a single cloud for about half an hour (the clouds move so slow here) and I’m not certain when it will re-emerge.

I was here for a bit yesterday as well, and discovered some walled gardens that remind me of The Secret Garden, with little paths and ivy and lashings of squirrels. I think I saw the most squirrels I’ve ever seen within an hour. I was a bit amused by all the flax bushes set around the walled gardens, but I guess they’re deemed attractive. I wonder what they planted before they had flax bushes, and if the paths are still the same as when the gardens were first built in the 17^th Century. There is also an old mansion to go with the walled gardens, and though it’s not really done up as a museum you can wander through the rooms and stare at the old fireplaces and the plasterwork on the ceilings.

I went directly from the 17^th Century house and walled gardens to Canary Wharf, which is quite a contrast. Canary Wharf tube station is, I think, the modern architectural equivalent of a cathedral. Four escalators run down from the entrance into a vast open space the size of a football field and about ten storeys high (these dimensions are vaguely guesstimated). You go through the ticket barriers and down another set of escalators to get to the platforms. Once out of the tube station, you’re faced with a square and a long lake/former dock, and sparkling office buildings on every other side.

(Interlude: I can see SIX squirrels at the same time! They are all checking the ground for something and doing their move-freeze-move-freeze thing. Ooh! Two dogs have appeared. The squirrels have shot up the tree. This is drama, this.)

The streets are one-way, and I’ve never seen them with more than a few cars on them. The footpaths aren’t full either, and everything seems sort of stark and impersonal and quiet. Every so often there’s the rumble of a DLR train going overhead on its tracks, which is also sort of impersonal because you know no one’s driving it. It’s probably very different at lunchtime on weekdays, when all the office workers come down out of their towers (or do they? Canary Wharf is the sort of place where people work fourteen hour days).

Once out of the main streets, it’s quite nice, though. I think I’ve mentioned going to the cinema there across a footbridge, and there are a few restaurants on the side of the docks that would be lovely when it’s a bit warmer.