Versailles! Strange Coincidences! Gardening!

Saturday

The original idea was to spend 2 days in paris, one in Marseilles, and the last at the jam in Dourdan. Saturday morning, I rode over to the metro station where I would be departing and found the proper kiosk to buy my ticket to marseilles.  I was shocked to learn that one way would be 86 euros! That's 129 dollars, my american friends. Considering that my ticket from Amsterdam to Paris was only ~35 euros, this was way too much, especially since I would only be there for a day.
 My seemingly flawless and watertight plan was disrupted, and I was scrambling to figure something else out. I finally decided to stay in Paris, and so boarded the tram back to the hostel to reserve a bed for that night (since it was saturday, I wanted to make sure I bought a bed before it was too late and possibly packed). At one of the metro stops, I ran into 2 calvin students from another study abroad trip! They were studying in Spain and decided to spend a weekend in Paris before their return to the states. Crazy stuff.
We decided to go to the Parisian catacombs, which holds the bones of roughly 6 million people - as Paris rapidly expanded in the 17th and 18th century, cemeteries that had previously been on the outskirts of the city turned into prime real estate area, so huge numbers of skeletons were moved to the catacombs.


After walking through the catacombs, the two people from the calvin program and I went our separate ways. Per their suggestion, I decided to check out Versailles.






This was a good idea for several reasons:
1. It was less than an hour outside the city, instead of 3 hours.
2. It was 4 euros round trip, instead of what would've been 160ish.
3. Admission to the Palace of Versailles was free! cool beans.

I don't know how they afford all of this stuff through free admission, but I'm not complaining.

Once the palace closed, I walked down to a nearby pond, and found a footpath. I walked on this footpath east, away from Versailles, for a while. It passed by this plot of gardens that were being farmed by french people, and met up with the road. I followed this road for a few hours until finally heading back.

  

Lots of small plots, presumably owned by different people.