Chartres & Paris weekend (part 2)

Today, I went to Paris to watch the Romeo and Juliet musical. Before I left Singapore, I was deliberating whether to catch it or not and I decided not too because I felt that I may not understand since it’s in French and there won’t be subtitles. However, that day G mentioned it again and I re-looked it up. Seeing that there was a 3pm show today, I decided to go for it since I’m here and it would be an experience to remember. Moreover, I loved some of the songs in the musical.

So, I bought the tickets via Ticketnet.fr – luckily they still had tickets. Fnac site was sold out and the Carrefour billeterie at Rambouillet told me it was sold out too. Apparently, each distributor has only a fixed number of tickets to sell unlike in SG where it’s a centralized system. The venue was at Palais Des Congres and I needed to collect my tickets before the show. Therefore, my plan was to retreive my tickets from the Virgin Megastore at Champs Elysees which is opened on Sunday.

Versailles & Musée D’Orsay

First Sunday of the month = no admission fees for many places!!

I had taken some food from the canteen the day before so that I have something to eat for breakfast – i.e. bread, jam, yoghurt and apple. Woke up at about 6am and left at 7:15am.

The day didn’t start great because I planned to take the 7:35am train but when I got to the station, I realised that I missed a fineprint on the timetable indicating that particular train doesn’t run on Sundays. So I waited for about 40 mins (in the cold) before I boarded the 8:05am train. I could have slept more! It was a very short journey and the ticket fare was 5 euros.

As usual, I had checked the weather forecast before I left and it is sunny (yay!) with windchill of -6 degrees (argh!)  in Versailles. I had put on the warmest thermal wear I have + jacket + scarf + gloves and brought heat packs along too.

I have no idea the exact amount of windchill I felt but I wanted to crawl into a hole and hide from the wind. While walking from the train station to the chateau, I could hardly feel my toes and was quite worried if they were frost-bitten! COLD!!!!

I am so glad (again) that my jacket has a hood… although it falls over my eyes at times, it blocked the wind from my head. I have also learnt from experience to always have a scrunchie with me – having hair flying in all directions is not fun.

I wanted to get to Versailles early since it is free entry and I assumed there would be a queue. Anyway, I’m glad I didn’t get there that early because it was so cold outside with the relentless wind. At close to 9am, there was a short queue and I got in quickly after going through the bag scanning.

Paris (25 Feb)

I was packed and (not exactly!) ready to fly off to Paris. I felt that I needed more time to revise French and I can’t pinpoint what else but just a feeling that I’m not ready… I was flying off just 1 day after my last day of work so perhaps mentally I felt that there’s not enough time.

My 58litre backpack weighed in at 15kg when I checked in! I did guess it was around that weight … so heavy! I was worried whether I could lift it up – using 1 arm, I can hardly lift it up high enough in order to put it on my shoulders. Once on the shoulders, although it is still very heavy, I think it should be doable.

Anyway, I had done all I could to reduce the weight – less clothes and even sacrificed my body lotion (need to buy in France). transferred full bottle of shower foam into 2 travel bottles (wonder if it will last or need to buy?) … sigh. Moreover, I had with me another bag and the SLR is in it… 3 kg? I’m really thankful that G bought the Sony Vaio P that is almost weightless.

Anyway, it was time to fly and as much worries as I had, there was not much I could do to solve the problem.