Field Trip - Fontainebleau 8-21-15

Jim asked what Fontainebleau meant and Deb related how it was an ancient place name most likely having to do with the many springs that are found on the grounds of the chateau but that the precise derivation was unknown.  Jim was interested in seeing a royal palace and mentioned Versailles, we countered with how about Fontainebleau.  The palace is older and while not as over the top as Versailles it was still very opulent and there would be almost no crowds.  After the press of people at the Louvre Jim was agreeable.  Be that as it may we got an early start and wended our merry way over to the train at Gare de Lyon and boarded for a ride down to Fontainebleau.
We boarded the train with a few minutes to spare and sat at a little banquet in the middle of the car which turned out to be agony for all of us, bad back support, no leg room, etc.  So we made the change to more conventional seating which were very comfortable indeed.  Because of the way people had chosen seats we ended up with Jim across the row from us and next to a nice woman who offered seating.  They had a lovely conversation in English, Spanish, and a little French, her name was Olga and she is an actor in the Paris area married to a man from Colombia.   The time down to Fontainebleau passed very quickly.
Once we arrived we stopped at a boulangerie for sandwiches, drinks, and pastries to take with us and eat at a bench on the chateau grounds.   It was getting warm but there was a little breeze so we sat in the shade overlooking the manicured grounds with the large pools and playing fountains.
After our lunch we went in to the palace and  walked through the rooms of the Napoleon museum then took the tour of the royal apartments as well as the one where Pope Pius VII was kept sequestered by Napoleon.
So many objects related to Napoleon and his family are on display, clothing, portraits, medals, arms, tableware, it's quite impressive.
After the Napoleon rooms the first actual apartment is the one where the Pope was kept a virtual prisoner for seven years, on an earlier visit there were objects related to Pius VII and Napoleon on temporary exhibition but now gone.  They are doing some renovation on the apartment and some of the rooms are "in progress" and some have had their furnishings changed as well.
The next group of apartments were related to Francois I and his wife Eleanor, Henri IV, Anne of Austria, mother of Louis XIV, each sumptuously decorated with furniture and tapestries of the time. The final set of rooms again displayed furnishings related to Napoleon and his second wife Maria Louise of Austria.  We finished the tour with a look at the chapel which is completely over the top in decoration.
After the tour we went to the cafe in the palace and sat in the shade for a bit of wine and cider then took the carriage ride out into the forest of the chateau.  During the ride the young woman conducting the coach gave us another version of how the name came to be, in her version it was a contraction of Fontaine, belle, eau, which is beautiful spring water.  So the source of the word may be somewhere in there but who really knows It's about a 15-20 minute ride and you get to see many of the old dependent houses, stables and springs with fish ponds, a very relaxing ride.  We caught the bus back to the station just in time to catch the train for Paris as it pulled up to the station.

 Getting back to the apartment from the station was an entirely different story however.  We walked to the Metro station and after standing for several minutes an announcement was made that there were problems between where we were and the next stop at Bastille.  They suggested that we walk over to Bastille and catch the metro there  to get to our stop.  We walked along the Porte de Plaisance yacht basin at the Arsenal back to Bastille and made it home on the Metro about 45 minutes later than we had planned.