La Famille à Paris Part II, La Banlieue

Most people who have studied French have learned at one time or another that the Paris banlieue or the suburbs are places to be avoided, the French equivalent of the poor inner city. Movies like "La Haine" and "Banlieue 13" and news reports about riots and car burning in Paris' banlieue have only reinforced these impressions. The truth is, while there are poor suburbs around Paris, there are also very nice ones, and even rich ones that we don't hear about as often.

My family spent Monday evening and then all day on Tuesday in the Paris suburbs. First they came to visit Gaby and me in Poissy to check out our humble apartment overlooking the Seine.

Then we went outside to look over the Seine ourselves.
Of course we had to show the family around our charming little town.
They thought it looked like a nice place to live! This was a bit of a relief because we'd thought they would think we'd made them come all the way out to the suburbs just to see...crap.
(A most unfortunate abbreviation, especially for a restaurant, eh?)

After Poissy, we headed over to Achères where Gaby's mom had prepared an Alsacian French meal of flammekuche (a very thincrust pizza-like dish with cream), a large ham, potatoes and fruit tarts. She'd also bought some Veuve Clicquot champagne to welcome them. It was a fun and interesting night of translating for Gaby and me. Everyone got along great, and it was getting late by the time we headed back to the train to accompany my family back into Paris.

We were glad to get them back to the hotel at a reasonable hour because Tuesday was to be spent at Versailles, another suburb of Paris that tourists don't usually think of as being the dreaded "banlieue." The town itself is very pretty (and rich), and the château is just spectacular (and huge!).
We visited all the wings that were open that day. The beautiful chapel:

And of course the recently renovated and extravagant Galérie des Glaces (the gallery of mirrors).

Lunch was simple curried chicken baguette sandwiches outside on the steps.

And then we went to explore the Versailles gardens. These are actually my favorite part of Versailles, and I was disappointed that the small gardens were closed for the winter.

But my family still got an idea of how amazing (and again, huge!) such gardens could be.

And so concluded our third busy day together in ...er near..Paris.