Easter Monday at the Château de Breteuil

Despite intentions to the contrary, I've made little progress in exploring the greater Paris Ile-de-France region, besides of course the small communist stronghold Malakoff where I'll be moving in less than two months. (More on that later.) Malakoff, serviced by Paris Metro line 13 and, in the case of another of Paris' beloved metro strikes, all of five to ten minutes' distance on foot from the city border, hardly counts as really getting out of the city.

As Easter Monday is a French national holiday, I took advantage of my time off and my metro card's free regional rail on weekends and holidays feature to start exploring some Paris day-trip destinations lesser known than Versailles.

The Château de Breteuil is located 35km southwest of Paris and accessible by the RER B. The first château built on this site dates back to around the time of the Norman Conquest of 1066. Nothing remains of the earliest château built on this property but the old dovehouse. The main building dates back to the turn of the seventeenth century. The property passed through the hands of several families before ultimately ending up with the Breteuils in 1712.

The Breteuil family history dates back much further than their time at this château. They actually had close political ties to William the Conqueror. The family boasted many important French historical figures, though perhaps my favorite would be Gabrielle Emilie de Breteuil, later known as the Marquise du Chatelet. She was France's first recorded female scientist. She translated and added to Newton's Principiae Mathematica and lived with Voltaire for 15 years as his mistress.

The Château de Breteuil was named a Monument Historique in 1973 and is a moderately popular tourist attraction today. On Easter Monday, it brought in a fairly sizeable crowd of eager children for the Easter Egg Hunt. It seems that European Easter Egg Hunts, or at least the one at the Château de Breteuil, are a bit more vicious than their American counterparts. There were not nearly enough eggs for all the children and those kids were a frightening bunch when it came down to the ultimate test: finding the most chocolates hidden in the woods just behind the manor. The bellow they all made when the hunt officially started was most remarkable: neither Esteban nor I had ever realized that a large group of young children could make such an frightening, deep noise. At least we know one thing: whether in grandma's backyard or the woods surrounding a several hundred year-old château, children across continents are well-trained in the art of the Easter Egg Hunt.