Day 7 - Pierrefonds

Today we did a day trip to Pierrefonds to visit le Château de Pierrefonds. I insisted that we visit this castle because it is the castle featured as Camelot in BBC’s Merlin (woooo, more British television!). We had trouble figuring out tickets and platforms at Gare du Nord, and after two ticket machines, a random guess as to what platform we were supposed to be on, and two real people, who told us different things (apparently; Miel was the one actually speaking to them of course), we found out that our Eurail passes were indeed all we would need, and found the proper platform for Compiègne. The trouble (“say trouble slash adventure!”) did not end there, however. Our train to Compiègne was late, so we missed the bus we were supposed to take to Pierrefonds and had to run around trying to figure out the bus schedule (there wasn’t another bus there), and then where to get a taxi.

We walked up the long and winding path (it was also “a little slippery,” a detail which I have added in parentheses after much debate, as Miel insists that our dear readers must know about all three qualities of this road, but I didn’t want more than two adjectives) to the castle and bought les billets (I was free again, and Miel says “I was reduced!”).

Le Château, in all its glory.

The first stop was the courtyard area, which is big and lovely and intricate. We saw an exhibit about the castle and its restoration by Viollet-le-Duc (who restored many, many buildings, including Notre Dame, in the mid-1800s), as well as drawings of the ruins and designs for the restoration. We walked through the portions of the castle open to the public, including the chapel, various halls (think “Great Hall,” not “hallway”) (Miel typed that; I was wondering how long it was going to take her to take over the computer), bedrooms, and spiral staircases. There was a rather creepy exhibit in the crypts featuring many sarcophagi of famous people (not actually where they were buried). It was dark and cold, and they had the voices of dead people narrating things that would have been creepier had I understood them (I got phrases like “mort” and “dormir,” and Miel assures me that the rest were equally chilling). Anyway, the whole castle was beautiful and awesome and I recognized a few places from Merlin which was SO COOL and now I have many, many, many pictures, a few of which you see here.

Courtyard! (Also lovely)

After our visit, we went to the gift shop and bought postcards. Miel asked the nice gift shop dude if he was there while they filmed Merlin, and he said rather uninterestedly that yes, he was, and they were coming back in two weeks. He was unenthusiastic about the whole thing, which is understandable given how much having a film crew in his castle must disrupt his life. We also walked around the surrounding area, a bit into the forest and down some random stairs.

They know why we really come...

Once back in Pierrefonds, we remarked about how cool it would be to live in a little town with a big castle looming over it. We ate lunch as we walked around, in the rain (“it was very good,” says Miel, referring to the sandwich and the pain du chocolat, not the weather). We passed a large gaggle of small children, and visited the Office de Tourisme thrice, very awkwardly, for various reasons. We got delicious hot chocolate in a café as well and waited around until the bus came. The bus driver was very nice although he played unfortunately American music.

The only other notable thing is that Miel’s métro ticket didn’t work (AGAIN) (NEITHER OF THEM) so she had to go argue with the ticket lady, about which she was annoyed and proud.

In closing, I will leave you with this quotation: “You haven’t closed yet! We have to mention our DEAR READERS! We always mention our READERS!” (By “we,” she means “I.”)

-Sara & Miel

P.S. Miel would like to note that the waitress at breakfast is very nice and she likes that she always speaks to us in French, and she laughed when Miel made me order this morning and tolerated my horrible pronunciation.

P.P.S. We have decided that we are going to need to have a “Picture-Copying Party” when we get home, due to the huge volumes of pictures, which my poor computer cannot handle backing up at the moment (current estimated time to copy just some them: “About 47 hours”). This will probably have to happen at the same time as the “Receipt-Organizing Party,” so parents should look forward to that.