Day Trip to Rambouillet

Tags

An Hour from Paris, bus, Château, Day Trip, garden, Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, Metro, park, Rambouillet, train

On Friday morning the forecast was finally good! So I lost no time in planning a day trip. I’ve already taken many of the trips proposed in An Hour from Paris, but I still hadn’t been to the château where French Presidents entertain foreign leaders, so I took a bus over to Gare Montparnesse to catch the train to Rambouillet. It was surprisingly easy to buy my round trip (aller et rétour) train ticket, and after a small confusion with a local train I got on the express train with time to spare.

The town itself is pretty typical, if a bit on the tired side. The château is nice, though I’ve seen nicer.

Half a dozen rooms in the château can be visited (so long as the President isn’t in residence).

Napolean I’s bathtub was very ornate, and also very tiny.

The formal dining room was impressive.

My favorite item in the château was this really charming chair.

The flower gardens were surprisingly thin, but the park is big, with lots of water features and some lovely vistas.

There are two little buildings in the park which can be visited, at specific times each hour. The first is a little milking house that was given by Louis XVI to Marie Antoinette.

The main feature of the milking house is an artifical grotto containing this statue of a milkmaid with her goat.

There was one absolutely unique feature of Rambouillet, hidden within a rather charming faux cottage.

The central room is small but quite elegant. Then as you look closer you notice…

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…that every surface of this room is completely decorated with shells.

All in all it was a perfectly pleasant place to stroll around on a sunny spring day.

There was another local/express confusion getting back to Paris, but it got sorted out with the help of a friendly young man. My real transportation issues started with finding the bus back to my apartment, then with getting a bus over to the apartment of my friend Ali for dinner. Both busses were late from the start, then excruciatingly slow. I was able to alert Ali to the situation from home but of course – still lacking a cell phone – was out of touch until I arrived. Fortunately my delay wasn’t an issue, and Ali ordered up a terrific Iranian meal. Our conversation ranged widely over family, health and life in general. When it was time to go home I took the métro instead of trusting to another bus.

My full photo set is at Day Trip to Rambouillet.

Hyper-Posh

Tags

Adrian, Boggi, fashion, flowers, garden, Grands Boulevards, Grégory, Harvard, Harvard-Yale, Hôtel de Pontalba, hyper-posh, Paris, Parisian Gentleman, posh, style, U.S. Ambassador’s residence, Yale, Zhizhong

I didn’t bring my dress jacket this year since I hadn’t needed it in the past couple of years. But a few days after I arrived not one but two dressy events got scheduled, so I went out an bought a new one. For under $100 I’m pretty happy with it, even though the material is synthetic.

My new Parisian jacket.

The first event was dinner at Restaurant Hélène Darroze two weeks before with my friend Taka and his partner. The second — arguably even posher — was the annual Harvard-Yale reception at the U.S. Ambassador’s residence, on rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré. Zhizhong is a member of the Harvard Club of Paris so he was able to bring me as his guest (though still costing each of us 45 euros).

Zhizhong also looking posh, in the private garden of the U.S. Ambassador’s residence.

Zhizhong has made some nice friends in the group, but most of the attendees were older and more status-conscious than I usually prefer.

Zhizhong with one of the nice younger friends he’s made through the Harvard Club of Paris.

I did bond with several rather charming older women, but that only goes so far for me.

Bob gingerly embracing the wife of a visiting minister.

The mansion itself, however, is stunning — a mini-Versailles. (Wikipedia tells me that it’s the Hôtel de Pontalba.)

Interior of the U.S. Ambassador’s residence in Paris.

Interior of the U.S. Ambassador’s residence in Paris.

Interior of the U.S. Ambassador’s residence in Paris.

And the enormous and gorgeous private garden, steps from the Champs-Élysées, is the pièce de résistance.

The private garden of the U.S. Ambassador’s residence in Paris is simply mind boggling.

After the Harvard-Yale event wrapped up, Zhizhong and I were still hungry so we walked along the Grands Boulevards in the direction of an Indian restaurant he likes. I noticed a group of stylish young men buzzing around a store on the boulevard des Italiens, and since we were also dressed to the nines (and I had had several drinks) I suggested that we try to get in. The woman at the door asked my name, which of course I gave her. When she couldn’t find me on the guest list she asked whether I was on the “Parisian Gentleman” list. I reluctantly admitted that I wasn’t. She then asked if I was with the press. I said, “Well, I could be.” She realized then that we were crashers! And waved us in anyway. No doubt because we’re fabulous, and better dressed than many of the Parisian Gentlemen already inside.

The stylish young crowd at the Boggi store on Boulevard des Italiens.

This crowd was more to my taste!

Not only was the crowd hotter but the food was much better!

Some of the cute guys eluded our grasp, but we had a delightful long conversation (in French!) with these two young visitors from Bordeaux. Contact info was exchanged and I hope to see them again, either in Boston or Bordeaux.

Zhizhong and Bob with our new friends from Bordeaux, Adrian and Grégory.

2016 Update: Grégory was a terrific host and tour guide during my 2016 visit to Bordeaux. 2019 Update: He’s now the proud father of a little girl!

Update: Grégory points out in a comment that Zhizhong and I are featured in an event photo on the Parisian Gentleman web site!

Zhizhong and me at the Boggi event from the Parisian Gentleman blog.

Our hyper-posh evening proved successful on all counts, just not all in the same venue. Ho hum. Just another typical day in Paris…