Paris has a charm that may appear to be overwhelming especially that it is so laden with tune, history and living that the idea of leaving it at least on a single day may appear to be non-essential. Each arrondissement promises a brand new world, whether bohemian cafe of Saint-Germain, royal arches of the Marais, artistic mounts of Montmartre or the intellectual excitement of the Latin Quarter. It is a universe unto itself. But to stay inside on the PRIperihriree0179 conserving to the middle of the wonderful solar system is as to view the fantastic star. The actual magic of Paris is enhanced when you come to know that Paris is the centre of a region that has its stories to tell, stories that you can approach with a convenience that is almost shocking. A miraculous system, the French railway, serving it is like a system of arteries which fills and feeds the city with blood and passengers as they are pumped out to an unbelievable number of worlds and villages in a scant radius. As the train slips out of the station a rail ticket may become a passport to palaces of splendid magnificence, into the shrine of artistic accomplishment, through towering medieval chapels and vine-growing vineyards all within a quarter of an hour or an hour. Going on a day trip out of Paris is not a way of escaping that city, but of learning more of it, of experiencing it as the heart of cultural landscape much deeper and more rich than its celebrated boulevards.
To any tourist attracted by the crown of royal ambition and unrestrained lavishness, the travel always starts by a brief ride on the RER C train to the place of Versailles. The destination is not just a palace, but an exclamation of power, a world that King Louis XIV imagined to be a stunner and in-control. The journey starts with your arrival at the entrance before even entering as the golden gates as well as the sheer awesome size of the facade of the chateau are meant to strike fear and reduce the person. As soon as you are inside, you are caught by the vortex of ceremony magnificence. And you go through the succession of luxurious state apartments, more gorgeous than the next, their walls adorned with mythological frescoes, their ceilings with the most precious canvases, their walls with the finest art-works. The apogee of this development becomes the Hall of Mirrors, a spectacular hall of sparkling reflections and crystal chandeliers in which the Treaty of Versailles was signed, bringing to a halt the First World War. There is so much history and light in a place that you can nearly sense the spirits of officials and ambassadors floating all around you.
The main palace of course has an overpowering magnificence but that is not all. When one goes out in the gardens, the genius André Le Nč ;tre being its designer, one gets out of all sorts: this was geometry, this was nature and this was water. Lawns and topiary scupties everywhere follow the perfect formal lines extending out of the palace; and a symphony of fountains, allegorical at that, grand, sweeping, and sprouting, form the background to the whole, making an all-together, all-geometrically intoxicating effect; and again in days on end come alive in dramatic musical numbers. You can just stroll around the Grand Canal hours and even rent a rowboat or just simply take a seat in one of the quiet benches and soak in all the enormity of it. However, to get a real idea about the world of Versailles, one has to go even beyond, in the more personal territories. The Grand Trianon, which is made of pink marble, provided the king with an escape route to the strict orders of the royal court even as the Petit Trianon is and will always remain synonymous with Queen Marie Antoinette. This was where she took sanctuary, and out of this starting-point you can make a stroll to her most intimate development, the Hameau de la Reine, the reverse fantasy of a rustic hamlet, with a working farmhouse, a water-mill, and an idyllic lake. A cozy almost dramatic hamlet signifies the yearning of the queen back into simpler times, in a sad contrast with the oppressive formality of the central chateau and perhaps an indication of the human dramas upon which the grand facade concealed.
Waving its glory with the flashing fervor, Versailles shouts and sounds, whereas the other royal palace, Chateau de Fontainebleau, demonstrates more subtle and multifaceted voice of centuries. Less populated and grander in its historical confrontation, Fontainebleau was the residence of eight centuries of the French monarchs- Between Louis VII of the 12 th century and Napoleon III of the 19 th. and its great and continuous history is inscribed in its very architecture, which is a rambling, crazy conglomerate of styles, a palace to which each succeeding generation has added and adorned. It is more of a lived-in house (albeit of indescribable size) rather than the monument. You can stare at the room in which kings were born and you will see the table at which Napoleon I signed his abdication. The absolute diversification of the interior adornment is overwhelming: there are renaissance frescos by such Italian masters as Correggio, the extravagantly furnished apartments of Napoleon and Josephine.
The history of Fontainebleau is overwhelming immersion in history. It is possible to explore its corridors with a sense of the exploration, to experience the burden of the centuries there in the silent corridors. It is surrounded too by the great Forest of Fontainebleau, once the royal hunting domain and now a walking and hiking area with miles of trails. Such a touch with the outside scenery creates a totally different image of the chateau as compared with Versailles. It seems rooted, a portion of the landscape and not something to be placed upon it. To the fan of history or the tourist who wants to experience the history of the French monarchy more at leisure, Fontainebleau is a slow motion tour through the very core of the French monarchy, a history you can feel through the numerous layers of patina of centuries.
but the surroundings of Paris attracted not only past and imperial monarchs to its areas, but artists as well, who needed to acquire a new sort of light, a more evanescent reality. The traveler to the realm of the Impressionism must first of all start in the little village of Giverny where means of Claude Monet, the master of the Impressionism, had spent the last forty-three years of his life. One visits his home and gardens to be inside one of his paintings. The estate is situated and separated into two gardens, which were his artworks as well as paintings. The best known is the Water Garden which he made through part of a diverted stream. Over here you will see the traditional Japanese bridge, covered with wisteria, and the pond with the water lilies he was obsessed with decades. At the bridge over the water, gazing down over the glittering reflections of the weeping willows, and the flotilla of blossoms, you see what he saw, a world dissolved in light, colour and water. It is a quite poignant experience and a moment of relating your eyes with those of the artists.
The Clos Normand the second garden is a furor of colour and life which blows just in front of his lovely pink house. It is the palette of a painter come to reality, it is a hooligan, but beautiful, blossom of poppies, roses, daisies and flowers of every kind grown, not according to the rules, but by the colours and by the touch. After that you will have a tour around the house itself, the yellow dining-room, the kitchen with its blue tiles, and will be shown the reproduction of his works but also of his own collection of Japanese prints, which so often inspired his work. One should go to Giverny in the spring or summer in order to find the gardens at their most moving and exhilarating in their beauty and to glimpse the spirit of an artist who transformed forever how we see the world.
Provided that, when Giverny is a celebration of the positivity that was Impressionism, nothing speaks more loudly and more moving in a genius pilgrimage image, than a quick jaunt to the village of Auvers-sur-Oise, the nominal last days of Vincent van Gogh. His stay at this village lasted seventy days during which he created almost eighty paintings in his terminally crazed fits of creation. There is no need to explain that to go through Auvers-sur-Oise is to go through his last masterpieces. The settings of his work have been saved in this town in an amazing way. And you may look on the real Gothic church he painted in the Church at Auvers, and look up at the tower which he used to paint just as he did himself. Best of all is to walk the track out of the village out into the great rolling wheatfields he painted on canvas and where he shot himself in tragedy. The landscape seems full of his energy, both in beautiful and turbulent terms.
This is further a journey of emotions, which is still continued at the Auberge Ravoux, which is the inn where Van Gogh took a small room in the attics and frequented his demise later on. You may go into the bare, little room which is kept we see—not cleared and cleaned up, but left as it was–without reading or writing or sound or stir in it, a very mute and mighty monument of his tortured genius. The last destination is the town cemetery which is a quiet hill that overlooks the wheat fields. And here are two easy, same graves smothered with ivy, those of Vincent and his faithful brother Theo, both departed within a six months interval. They lie side-by-side for eternity. This is a grim, yet an unforgettable visit-a journey that is greater than appreciating the art; this is a journey towards experiencing the story of the human being as the artist is indeed.
Outside the histories of the monarchs and of the artists, the Ile-de-France lies a land also of deep religious faith and medieval invention, and it was written in stone as in the glorious cathedral at Chartres. You can get there by a short train journey out of Paris, to a small town over which, besides the Eiffel Tower, does loom what many feel to be the finest example of French Gothic architecture. The Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Chartres is almost unharmed by the French Revolution and this is why it has a unique persistence of authenticity. As you enter you are always thunderstruck by the awe-inspiring height of the nave, its just called proportions and that feeling of fearing spiritual quiet. It is the masterpiece of the engineering and art work, when the cathedral was built to elevate the human spirit to heaven. Nave One of the most renowned medieval and best-maintained labyrinths in the world is a winding maze on the floor of the nave, it symbolizes a spiritual journey.
Yet the real glory of Chartres consists in its windows of stained-glass. Much of the 12 th – and 13 th -century glass that is in the cathedral today is original to the building and it is unequalled anywhere in a courtyard. The building in its entire interior is flooded with a transcendent blue light, a color now unique to the building, even named “Chartres blue,” the formula of which is lost with time. Such windows are not only decorations; they are story-telling panels, scenes of the bible or the Bible of the poor, pictures with a story in them and an audience which was to a great extent illiterate in the middle ages. it is, in a word, to connect directly with the faith and the art of the Middle Ages, an instantly moving aesthetic and spiritual encounter.
To see another side of history and get a sample of what the capital of Normandy is like, visit Rouen; you will surely find a mixture of the medieval character with the theatrical heritage. This is the place where Joan of Arc was tried and burnt as a martyr in 1431, and her memory is very much present everywhere, I felt here the tower, where she was imprisoned, then the church standing today in her honour, at the Old Market Square, where she was burned at the stake. But Rouen is also a city of stunning beauty. The historic core is a rabbit warren of pedestrianised lanes and streets dominated by marvellous half-timbered houses. An astronomical clock made in the 14th century called Gros-Horloge is simply a striking masterpiece. Another Gothic masterpiece of the city is the cathedral of Notre-Dame de Rouen that is well known by the painting series created by Claude Monet who studied how the light influenced the facade of the building at different hours of the day. Excursion to Rouen is an excursion to a life museum, to the city which has its great history and at the same time has energetic and modern rhythm.
Whereas Chartres puts on spiritual liquor, an eastward trip to the town of Reims gives something more tangible and party-Like, a plunge into the fizzy universe of Champagne. This beautiful city is the unofficial capital of the Champagne region and the seat of numerous Champagne houses that are very famous in the world. Visiting here is a high-life form of day trip. It is possible to reserve a tour at legendary producers such as Veuve Clicquot, Taittinger, Pommery or Mumm. The tours are interesting and they lead you deep underground to the old Gallo-Roman chalk cellars or crayeres as they are known as where millions of bottles are left to mature at the cool eating temperature. You get to hear of the complex *methode champenoise, as how the ordinary grapes can be transformed to the most renown celebratory wine acclaimed all over the world, a subject that fits to climax with a pleasant tasting. It is an enlightening trip and yet massively hedonistic.
Yet Reims city is not all about Champagne. Bearing in mind the fact that the crowning of kings of France took place here over centuries, it takes the position of tremendous significance in the French history. The Cath cdrale Notre-Dame de Reims is the magnificent example of High Gothic architecture even grander than in Paris and Chartres and the facade is decorated by the thousands of sculpted figures. On the spot where Clovis was baptized and Charles VII crowned after his coronation along with Joan of Arc neighboring you, you can understand the strong influence of the divine history of the French monarchy and the drink which celebrates it nowadays bears the name of the region. Although most people will use it as a very special day trip out of Paris, a day in Reims will be a combination of the sacred and the profane and, to another extent, a celebration of both faith and fizz.
Yet the city of Reims is not all about Champagne. It is of huge significance in the history of France, the place where the kings of France were crowned throughout the centuries. The Cath dral Notre-Dame de Reims is grandiose work of High Gothic building, and still bigger than in Paris and Chartres, and its facade is ornamented with thousands of sculptor figures. Founding yourself in the Nave where Clovis was baptized and Charles VII had been crowned under the auspices of Joan of Arc, you can sense the unity of the holy heritage of the French King and the festive beverage that now got the name of the region in which it is produced. A visit to Reims is a continuum of the sacred and profane, a religious and bubbly list of contiguity, and therefore a very unique and unforgettable outing of Paris.
However the French history of greatness and monarchical willingness has some other, much more tragic and yet decisive pages, and the most decisive of them is the story of a fantastic chateau which itself was the essence of perfection and thus it ruined its owner and became known as Versailles. This is the story of Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte. A visit here is a visit back in time, an account of passion, creativity and envy. It is the work of Nicolas Fouquet, the brilliant audacious finance minister of Louis XIV. He employed the most imaginative men of the day, building architect Louis Le Vau, landscape architect Andre Le N°tre and painter-decorator Charles Le Brun, and left them an apparently unlimited purse to make a carefully arranged residence of the highest harmony and beauty. The end product was the masterpiece, a beautiful culmination of architecture and landscape where all the lines of the garden were carefully created to make the gracious lines of the chateau complete.
On August 17, 1661, Fouquet celebrated a huge fete to announce his success and he invited the young King creating a scene with his entire court. The party was characterized by a much-stated luxury, where Moliere also performed plays, the chef Vatel imagined novel menus and a fireworks show that illuminated the night. The evening was too successful. Jealous because Fouquet had displayed such a wealth and power that was brighter than his own residencies, The King perceived Fouquet has a rival. In less than a month he had Fouquet arrested on fabricated charges of embezzlement. The rest of Fouquets life was left in prison. Louis XIV subsequently promptly engaged Fouquet creative team of Le Vau, Le Nôtre, and Le Brun, and he ordered them to come up with something even better to establish his personal glory; Versailles. To visit Vaux-le Vicomte is the attractive blue print of Versailles a site of good taste and gloomy history today. To complete the truly magical experience, visiting the chThe chance to experience the romance and drama of the 17 th century France, as kin gs of candles are lit throughout the house and gardens is one of the spectacular, one of the candlelit evenings that the chThe summer candlelit evenings rarely disappoint.
Whereas Vaux-le-Vicomte is the story of the tragic ambition, the other moated jewel north of Paris, Chateau de Chantilly, provides a picture of an aristocratic life, which brings art, horse finesse, as well as even the legend of cooking. The location of the chateau is magnificent, the masterpiece of the Renaissance that seems to be lifted above water. It literally consists of two linked-up houses, the Petit Chateau and the Grand Chateau, the latter of which was razed in the French Revolution and redesigned to the 19 th century. But the real treasure of this house is enclosed within its walls. The Musee Condes is located in the chateau. It is a personal collection of Henri dOrleans, Duke of Aumale and the major part of the estate is bequeathed to the Institut de France on the condition that his collection is not to be changed.
This way, one can go to the museum Cond e, and feel like visiting a well-preserved 19 th century art museum. With the exception of the Louvre it possesses one of the best galleries of paintings in France, insofar as the classical works of France and Italy are concerned. You can see at inches distance the masterpieces of Raphael, Poussin, of Ingres, each in the place where they pleased the Duke. The collection is personal and excessive simultaneously, a result of extraordinary interest of one man who was obsessed with art. Beyond the museum, the estate offers further delights. The extensive estates allow an extended, relaxing walk to explore the french formal garden by Le Ntore, a fanciful Anglo-Chinese garden, and a romantic English garden. And no visit can finish off without the mentioning of the contribution of the chateau to gastronomy. This is where in the 17th century the sweetened, whipped cream now known under the name of ch life of Francis Vatel, the legendary cook, is said to be invented. You can take a taste of a dessert featuring crme Chantilly and composed on the territory of its creation with a simple, but tasting pleasure.
The Great Stables are the most lavish and grandest of stables in Europe, and although demolished the estate still retains them. This architectural wonder is made to accommodate 240 horses and 500 hounds and today forms the Living Museum of the Horse which displays definitive equestrian performances that exhibit the art of classical dressage. The art and architecture, the equestrian skills and the world renowned cuisine combine to make a day at Chantilly a multi-dimensional and many sided experience that will please nearly any interest that a person can possibly harbor. It is a destination which actually lives up to the French ideology of lart de vivre which actually means the art of living well.
Chateaux and aristocratic pastimes aside, there is yet an even stronger pulse to medieval heart of the country that is not only felt in the cathedrals but more singularly felt also in the towns which, in the general sense, have had the vitals of their fortification left within their own walls. To fully experience the Middle Ages it is possible to visit the UNESCO World Heritage site of Provins which proves to be a unique experience. During the 12th and 13th centuries Provins was a major market town in Europe, the setting of the Champagne Fairs, which attracted merchants across the continent. The affluence that was produced at this time enabled the town to construct an unbelievable series of fortification walls and it is these walls that are exceptionally preserved ramparts that constitute the predominant attraction today. You may stroll along these grim walls, with fortified gates here and there, and visualise the town in its busiest days.
What is really unique in Provins, however, is what goes on above, as well as below, the ground. The town is overcome by the majestic Caesar tower, a 12 th century keep that has some breathtaking panoramas of the countryside. What is more interesting, are the town vast underground tunnels, or les souterrains. Hollowed out of the chalky ground, these vaulted passageways had a variety of uses throughout the centuries, as quarries, as storerooms and even as meeting-places of secret societies. The tour of this underground world is some mysterious and cool trip to the secret history of the town. Guillaneau de Provins has also taken its heritage in a very venerable spirit, it is a remarkable repository of the best medieval reenactments and shows in France. During the tourist season, it is possible to observe spectacular shows of the knights, breathtaking demonstrations of falconry and dramatic skits which are presented in order to revive the history of this town. With bright colours, much activity, and a very hands-on approach, a visit to Provins is more a rush back into the past than a silent study of artifacts, and so will be popular with families and anyone with a romantic feeling about the days of chivalry.
Back to a world of knights and of the medieval fairs, another day trip will take you into the very heart of modern European history, to the clearing of forest of Compi the place where one world war ended, as well as a country witnessed its humiliation in another. Although the town has a palace of its own which is also one of the favorite residences of Napoleon III and Empress Eugenie, the strongest motive to visit may be found in the very heart of the forest. This is the Glade of the Armistice, a silent, sacred place where the destiny of the 20 th century was determined. Later, on November 11 th, 1918, the Armistice was signed in this very place, inside a private railway car by French military leader Ferdinand Foch, in order to consummate the First World War hostilities.
The site today is a deeply moving memorial. There is a small museum which contains objects of those times, and the copy of the railway carriage is located in some protective building. The real carriage was kept there together with a statue of Foch and other monuments that would remind people of victory at the Allied side. This prepares, however, the second, more bitter act of the story. This is where the French surrendered in June 1940 after Adolf Hitler went on a lightning attack in France. It was a well-planned form of revenge because he had reluctantly agreed to the removal of the original railway carriage out of the museum and position it back where it had been placed in 1918, hoping to witness the fall of his enemies at the very position Germany had fallen. The carriage was later taken to Germany and destroyed. When one stands in such a glade one feels the great burden of these two different historical moments, a realm of survival and ultimate victory and of supreme failure. It is a sad, introspective ride, providing an important lesson of history right alongside the French capital.
Parisian train network however does not keep the traveler in France. As the high-speed Eurostar takes off at the Gare du Nord, the very idea of a day trip becomes transnational, and it becomes unbelievably possible to exchange Parisian croissants with Belgian Brussel waffles over a Brussels day trip. Within an hour and half, you can find yourself in the centre of Belgium which is a city with an entirely different architectural and cultural taste. It will start (it must do so), in the Grand-Place, which is generally thought to be one of the most beautiful squares in the world. This is an UNESCO World Heritage site: a spectacular array of richly decorated guildhalls, the towering Town Hall and the Breadhouse, built of yellow brick and topped off with detailed Gothic and Baroque decoration and statues from gleaming gold.
Just around the corner, a stroll leads you down to the famous and notoriously tiny resident of the city, the Manneken Pis, a mischievous statue of a boy in bronze which has become a synonym of the irreverent nature of Brussels. However, a day visit to Brussels is an experience indeed. It is also a chance to savour the best chocolates in the world with mythical chocolatiers such as Neuhaus, Godiva and Pierre Marcolini who produce their superb pralines and truffles. It is also on the issue of picking up a hot, gooey LiGe waffle on a street-managed merchandiser, which makes the sugar caramelize on your fingertips. It could be trying some frites in a paper cone with a dollop of mayonnaise, or in case you are the mind to try it, a taste of one of the hundreds of flavours of strong, tasting Belgian beer. One day in Brussels is a blow-blow of brilliant views and tasty goodies, an ideal, petite exploration into a different culture.
And to end up with the most ambitious, most audacious day-trip of all, you can use the same tunnel under the English Channel to land you in a completely different world, replacing the sophisticated grace of Paris with the colorful, historic and vast capital of London. The drive is a meager little more than two hours but the shift in culture is in a flash. The day in London demands concentration and an early wake up call but provides an exciting fast pace. You might spend your day in the history, coming out of St Pancras station and moving directly to the Tower of London to see the Crown Jewels and listen to the Yeoman Warders as they recount to you the tales of intrigue and execution. Then a stroll over Tower Bridge and across the South Bank provides memorable vistas of the skyline of the city, including the new building of the Shard contrasted with the old dome of St. Pauls Cathedral.
Alternatively, you may have a culinary and cultural day. You would be able to wallow in the sweet mayhem of Borough Market, eating your weight in artisanal cheeses and fresh oysters, and gourmet world street food. Spend your afternoons at a West-end matinee, admiring the world-renowned works on the National Gallery, or window-shopping the cool stuff in Covent Garden. This energy of London the red double-decker buses, the black cabs, different symphony of languages gives a shocking and energizing contrast to Paris. Still it is a long tiring day to say the least, yet to breakfast in Paris and lunch in London, to wander the banks of the Seine in the morning and the Thames in the afternoon, is to feel that to modern European travel is due a dose of genuine magic, so near are these two great world capitals.
and after all, it is the diversity of the Parisian day trip which yields perforce so great a measure of pleasure. in one moment you may have happened to be crushed by the divinising of a gothic cathedral, and the next moment you are drinking Champagne in a chalk-cellar of ages. At Versailles you can walk in the footsteps of kings, at Givernyin the footsteps of artists, at Rouen in the footsteps of martyrs, and at Compi dgne in the footsteps of soldiers. You can even cross even national boundaries to indulge in the unique cultures either of Brussels or even in London. Every trip serves as a fresh pair of eyes through which you can perceive Paris the next time you go there. the city is going not to be a remote, picturesque territory but the actual, pulsating heart of a region–and a continent–what is, after all, rich, complex, and fascinatingly accessible. These are not excursions making such a feast at Paris merely an accessory; by means of them it is bound into a very vaster, grander web of European history and art and life. They demonstrate the fact that not always to enjoy the center is better to approach the edge.
