What shall we do with all this useless beauty?

The first thing I saw when I stepped out of the train station at Versailles was a man putting on socks, leaning on a Weber grill, next to a full bike rack, in front of a Tex-Mex restaurant. The next thing I saw was a huge throng of sweaty people, hands on heads, clearly from some sort of running race. There were whole teams. It was apparently a large to do and it was now over at noon when I had arrived. Outside was blue forever, eighty degrees, no dreams of rain like back home. I think I was reflecting on the truly excellent weather when I saw the man who apparently had torn his nipples off while running in his lycra shirt. The shirt was yellow with two dark red circles like gunshot wounds on his chest. His friends were all talking and laughing, he was not. I tell you this, the Tex Mex restaurant, the nipples erased, because maybe you will pick up on what I did not.

This was all obviously not going to go according to plan. I am usually someone who is sensitive the signals and metaphors around me, I can spot bad omens, and for a smart and reasonable man I am quite superstitious.

Versailles had the most tourists in one place I have ever seen, and that is an insane amount of people. Likely part of this was due to the race, but the entire little town was fairly bursting with pilgrims. BeforeI had arrived I had thought this should be very economical and easy, the train took 45 minutes (only because I missed a connection flirting with some Italian chippy) and was like 4 euro total there and back. The little town itself is very attractive, with wide clean streets, and very verdant. I saw near the road in two locations minature carousels that were going round and round with children holding onto the necks of their plastic steeds. The line to get tickets inside was nearly forty five minutes as well, the girl selling the tickets had a nice face, I wanted to like her immediately. I asked for one ticket, she nodded smiled and told me it was 27 euros.

Wait...what?

"Serious?" I asked, she looked confused by my question. I have had a few occasions of price gouging, a man at a market wanted to charge me 5euro for 3 apples, my response: "5!? (holds up the bag) What else do they do?"

She was indeed serious, obviously, they wanted about 40 USD to walk around Versailles, and she looked badly nervous when I asked her if Gabriel Byrne would be there dressed as D'artanagn in his foppish Musketeer outfit, catching rotten apples with his rapier. She did not understand the question, and as this would be the only way I would be willing to spend that much to walk around someplace and take pictures I smiled at her and left. Another weird American.

I walked to the gate, hot from huge amounts of people and the strengthening noonday sun. Hot from a 45 minute wait to get ripped off. These lousy pimps! I decided, while looking at a statue of Louis XIV, looking dashing on a warhorse, that Versailles was essentially a once beautiful woman now aging who never figured out that having lots gold and marble doesn't mean you're classy, and it doesn't mean you don't have to learn more and better meaningful tricks aside from prettiness. The Louvre is 6 euro to see a record of the artistic and thoughtful achievements of our race. Versailles is 27 euro to see the gold gates and the pen where they used to perfume Marie Antoinette's sheep, until the peasants had enough and came and beat her door down and cut off her carefully made up head. After all these years, Versailles apparently is still a great symbol of learning nothing, a last gasp from an extinct and irrelevant Monarchy. Versailles, Louis, Marie, and Napoleon can all get fucked. It is a fitting end you have become an overpriced tourist trap, may you be trod upon by yokels until acid rain claims you.

Ho ho. Maybe that's coming on a little strong bubba! But it is my passionate belief that we all deserve access to the lasting beautiful things that we make. It's simply crass to pimp out something that should be culturally relevant with a ridiculous markup that'd make AIG assholes pump their grimy, fat, fists in 2004. Aren't there enough things for sale?

Ironically, the exorbinant pricetag turns it into something cheap.

So. Having a greater understanding of the French Revolution I moved on. The connecting station on RER line C to Versailles is Champs de Mars/Eiffel Tower. As you can see from the pictures the weather was amazing today. If you ever find yourself in Paris, you are obviously required by cosmic law to go to the tower. I have been to the top of it twice and so I did not this time. Rather right before the grand entrance to the tower, where there is the snaking line, and the snack stand, and the gravel, and the dust, there is a small park on the southeast side of the tower. There is a small pond, and benches, and grass that people sit and lay on. Initially I was sitting on the bench, reading my Eurail timetable and trying to figure out what I want to do after Munich. There was a group of kids in their early 20's sitting on blankets in a circle talking and seemingly unaware of their surroundings, five, six, couples of various ages sitting and looking upward, or laying and cuddling eachother under the small trees in the courtyard, kids were chasing pigeons who would flutter indignantly and then quickly return. I watched two beautiful french girls jog by in their sports bras and then suddenly realized I was the guy from Aqualung and quickly scrambled onto the grass.

The march back from Versailles had been hot, I was wearing long sleeves and do not want to roll them up as laundry will not be an option very often. I do not want stretched sleeves, therefore. My shoulder hurt from my bag, and when I lay on the cold grass in the shade under the tower I immediately felt a deep sense of comforted calm. Most of my trip thus far as been a scramble, finding where to go, negotiating with hotel clerks, or shady produce dealers in St. Denis. I think that this trip being treated more like an adventure than a vacation, calm and relaxation will be in shorter supply than you would otherwise suppose. However, laying in the park, with the kids playing with the birds, listening to the pond and ducks on a glorious Sunday afternoon put me immediately to sleep. This picture is what I was looking at directly above me when I fell asleep.

As I write this, I am on my stomach in a hostel in a not nice neighborhood where seemingly everything smells like piss, I was offered drugs today by four seperate people between the metro and the door. The walls are purple and my room mate is snoring like a freight train making dirty drunken love to a chainsaw. Tomorrow I am going to Louvre, before I catch my night train to Nice.

Things are very fantastic, thanks.