Chantilly Lace and Pretty Face 9-2-15

Tomorrow they are forecasting that Paris will be shut down traffic wise due to a large number of Farmers driving their tractors into Paris to protest low prices for their products and the high costs of material and loans, so we headed out to Chantilly to see another chateau within an hour of Paris.  We took the Metro down to Gare du Nord and then an RER train out to Chantilly.
A very interesting day indeed, we tried to buy a ticket from the last station where our passes were valid to Chantilly but the ticket office said they couldn't sell one and that we would have to buy it at the last station.   So we went down to wait for the train, I then had the bright idea that I would try to find out how much it might cost so I went up to an automated vending machine as I was sort of fumbling around a man behind me kindly offered to 'help me'  and quickly navigated through a number of screens.  I tried to explain what I was doing but he sort of ignored me and continued on, then he got to a screen that showed 49.80 euros and inserted his card.   He produced two tickets and told me to follow him which I did but he led me down to a lightly populated part of the station and tried to have me give him the ticked price in cash, whereupon I demurred and explained that I had valid fare almost the entire distance already and wasn't going to pay for another set of tickets, sorry.  He didn't really complain and I walked off, think it may have been a scam?  I do and I think he may have palmed tickets to get me through the entry gate and hoped to make a quick 50 euros.
Later when we were waiting for our train, another train came to the platform and we watched as people got on.  The train sounds a horn and then closes the doors to leave and at this moment a middle aged lady hurries up to the train and tries to board whereupon she slips and falls backward halfway in the train with the doors closing on her midsection.  I ran forward and forced the doors open while some other people helped her up, she had hit her head on the concrete and was a bit dazed but then helped her on the train and were talking to her as the train left.  The two sides of Paris, scams on one side and genuinely concerned people helping each other when in need.


So we caught our train and rode out to Chantilly on a lovely morning, clouds and sun and cool breezes for our walk from the train to the chateau through the forest.  We stopped and had a lunch on a bench then proceeded to the chateau.  It was build by the Duc de Montmorency (Anne) who was also the builder of Ecouen (our last trip out) and is pretty spectacular.

The later family were the Condes, second only to the king in nobility in France, and some were prolific collectors of art.  The chateau is second only to the Louvre in holdings of Raphael, and that only scratches the surface.

There is also an immense stables, looking large enough to be the chateau itself, and next to it a very large horse racing track.  It is host to several large european horse races.   We didn't really have time to go through in depth so we will definitely be coming back in the near future to finish the chateau and to see the stables and museum of horses.