Paris-Lyon 2009: Château de Fontainebleau

We have a few destinations within an hour or so of Paris that we would like to try to get to while we are here; on Saturday, we visited the first one, the Château de Fontainebleau. Unfortunately, my camera battery ran out fairly early on in our tour of the château, so, much like the paper I wrote about the first 1/3 of the Iliad freshman year of college, in this post I will give you a glimpse of the first 1/3 or so of our visit to Fontainebleau. (We may add more pictures from Aaron's camera later; for some reason, the ones taken on my camera seem to upload a bit faster.)

Although Fontainebleau is just under 40 minutes by train from Paris (which by American standards would put it within commuting distance), it has the distinct atmosphere of a small town rather than a suburb. Besides being home to the sprawling, beautiful, and highly historic Château de Fontainebleau, it is also home to INSEAD (http://www.insead.edu), a graduate school that describes itself as "the business school for the world," and which my former classmate Brendan (who used to work there) described as "the Harvard Business School of Europe."

Overall, we both thought Fontainebleau was great; it's an excellent slighly-off-the-beaten-path alternative to overcrowded Versailles. The train is convenient (once you figure out which window you're supposed to be waiting at to buy your ticket...), the town is pleasant and has an impressive number of chocolate shops per capita, and rental of a multilingual audioguide is included with admission to the château, so you actually have some idea of the historical significance of what you are looking at as you make your way through. If we had more time, we would have also liked to check out the adjacent Forest of Fontainebleau, which apparently covers over 100 square miles (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forest_of_Fontainebleau).

Walking through residential area on the way from Fontainebleau-Avon train station to the château

This park, although apparently considered part of the château grounds, seemed to have been cut out of the maintenance budget some years go. As we walked through it, I imagined it redeveloped as the Jardin Sportif de Fontainebleau -- a few soccer fields here, a few tennis courts there, some nice biking and jogging paths...and voilà!