Day 12 - Saturday, July 20

We arrived at Versailles at 11:00AM on yet another day full of sunshine, typical of the trip so far.  The gals briefly tried recreating the October 6, 1789 Women’s March that liberated the place on the promenade leading up to the Chateau.

The scale and spectacle of the palace confirmed all my prejudice against royalty and its aims.  After an hour and forty-five minutes of stupefying splendor, I was ready to leave before my latent Ultra-Hard-Leftist-Saul Alinsky-ite-Radical-Socialist-Liberal-Moderate-Democrat tendencies got the better of me and forced me to sack the place in the name of Revolution.  I find it mind blowing that back home in the states the People, who have a republic where they themselves rule, are rising up to install an aged and incontinent king.  In 1992, it was Clinton who famously proclaimed, “It’s the economy, stupid.”  Today I want to swing from the chandeliers in the Hall of Mirrors saying, “It’s the stupid, stupid!”

We decided next to tour the Eiffel Tower.  Remembering from our 2017 trip the boulevard along the Seine where sites like the Petit Palais lay in store, I elected to take the train to Invalidides and walk back along the Seine to Champes de Mers and tower itself.  Emerging to street level, however, I was met with a hastily constructed ten foot high wooden fence that I soon learned surrounded every site of any value in Central Paris and barricaded everyone not holding an Olympics pass to what lie within.  This stung my sense of egalitarianism and liberty deeply and with every encounter with this bastard wall and with the dull eyed, bored police officers standing alongside, my fury grew.  We got as close to the Tower as permissible without taking up arms, and retreated once again to the condo.