Steenblik Overseas Vacation - Day 12: Paris Temple, Palace of Versailles, Seine River Cruise, & Eiffel Tower

This morning, we (Lloyd, Margie, Time, Suzanne, Tony, and I) woke up early to get ready to go to the Paris temple. We didn't want to risk having a hard time with the public transportation and mission our session, so Margie hired our driver to come and pick us up from the hotel.  

We had no problems getting to the temple and got their plenty early.  We walked around the grounds and took some pictures before going into the temple.  We got clothes for the session and got changed.  They then gave us headsets where we listened to the session in English.  It was a lovely session and beautiful celestial room.  

After we got changed, we went out and visited the visitor center where we chatted with the sister missionaries.  I gave them all hugs and got was too emotional, but they made me think about Tyler and how close it was that he too would be a missionary in a foreign land.  Tony and Margie then got changed before we walked up the big hill to go to the Palace of Versailles where the other four were there waiting for us.

We met up with the others and then we were all able to get checked into the palace with about a million other people.  The palace was very extravagant and ridiculously decorated with so many paintings of the dude, Henry? and his lady friends.  

There were so many people crammed together going from room to room that it was just so hot and crazy.  About halfway through I didn't really care to see anything else, I just wanted out.  So, then it was look around the room as quickly as you could to just continue walking out of the place.  Lots of tour groups clogging up the areas.  Too many people and the heat made it very hard to enjoy all that Versailles had to offer.  

We were going to go and look at the gardens, but they had no shade anywhere outside and we decided that what we saw from up above was sufficient.  So, we walked to the subway and took it back to our hotel.  Everything went fine going back until we got to a second to last transfer stop.  Suzanne and Tim were behind Lloyd in the train car (we all kind of took turns being behind Lloyd so that he didn't go the wrong way or get left) when the doors to the train started shutting.  It shut right on Suzanne and knocked her to the ground in-between the train and the train station.   Tim, Tony, and Lloyd grabbed her and yanked her up and onto the platform to keep her from getting swept under the train.  It all happened so fast, and it was so scary.  She then sat and rested for a little while on the curb before slowing going to our next transfer.  She was pretty banged up but was able to come out with us that night.  She just had to go really slowly on the stairs especially.  Part of me thought, why did that happen to Suzanne after she went to the temple, shouldn't she have been protected from that?  But then I changed my thinking and reminded myself that it could have been so much worse for Suzanne and good thing we went to the temple, and she was protected from something way worse.  So much of life is how you look at things.  I am so thankful that it wasn't worse.

After we got to the hotel, we all got freshened up before we took the subway to the Eiffel Tower stop where we were to go on a Seine River cruise.  Because of the nationwide music festival, it was crazy busy down by the river.  I wasn't sure we were going to get on a boat, but we did.  There weren't any more seats on top of the boat, but we did get some looking out the window on the bottom.  You could go out on the little deck area to be outside during the ride.  Tony and I just watched and enjoyed from out seats.  Very pretty views of Paris and tons of people hanging out waving to the boats and having a grand time.

After our boat ride we walked around the Eiffel Tower with Lloyd, Margie, Suzanne and Tim.  Derek and Don went to experience the music festival and Nate and Amy went to get some food.

We wanted to see the tower light up and night and see it twinkle.  They have it twinkle for like 10 minutes every hour, so that was fun to watch.  Tony and Margie got us some gelato while we waited for the lights to come on.  I thought that they would miss it, but they were late in turning on the lights, so it all worked out.  After we enjoyed the lights, we made our way back to the hotel via public transportation.  It seemed to take forever, but we made it back safe and sound.  It was a good day at the temple and site seeing.