When the Paris temple was announced in 2011 I was already mentally planning our trip to go to the open house. Since my dad served as a missionary in Paris 55 years ago it has always held a special place in our hearts. For me the seed was planted early on. And dreams were being formed from the pages of my French text books in middle school. Finally after years of French study and travel dreaming I was able to realise all my dreams and joined the BYU France study abroad program in the spring of 1997. As luck would have it and without realising it we planned our trip to attend the Paris temple open house on the exact day of my first arrival in France as a student 20 years ago! Such remarkable timing. Though I have been back to France many, many times since, this trip was extra special.
We took the car over on the ferry on Friday evening and drove off in La Havre Saturday morning. We first stopped in the delightful harbour town of Honfleur. We carried on and visited Monet's Giverny. It was every bit as beautiful as I remembered it 20 years ago, just a tad (!) more crowded. We made it to Versailles in time for dinner after checking into our hotel just a stone's throw from the temple. The next morning we went to church at the Versailles ward, which was bursting at the seams with all the extra visitors in attendance due to the temple open house. After church we met up with friends from California who were also in town for the open house. We had a wonderful lunch in beautiful old Versailles. Versailles is such a gorgeous town, some place I could really live. After our lunch together we parted ways, and we headed over to the Palace of Versailles. We decided to forego the palace itself (which we had seen twice before), as the queues were laughably long, and instead skipped ahead to the beautiful gardens. We enjoyed strolling the fountain-filled gardens accompanied by some lovely opera music. After enjoying the main gardens we went further out and hired some bicycles for the rest of the afternoon. It was so much fun cycling around the outer gardens of Versailles, such a great way to explore it all. Rain quickly took over the skies and we had to make a quick escape back to return the bikes followed by a long, soggy walk back to the car. Needless to say room service was the perfect solution to such a wet finale to our day. On Monday we enjoyed a slow morning and then made it over to our booked time-slot for the temple open house. It is such a beautifully simple design that is so well suited for France. I loved how they incorporated various details that really reflect French culture and design. It was a special day experiencing this as a family. After a nice lunch at a nearby bistro we packed up and drove to Calais to get on the train through the Euro Tunnel back to the UK. Such a lovely weekend, and I don't think it will ever stop being amazing to me that we can pop over to France for a weekend!
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