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Published: August 13th 2008
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Thursday, 17 July, we depart Caen, France enroute to Paris, France. Yes, back to Paris—Why in the world would we come back to Paris? Good question, we asked ourselves that as well. Simple reason is to stay the night in Paris to head to our next destination.
We take the TGV, high speed train which proves to be a real first class experience. We arrive in Paris and seek out our hotel. This time around we are staying in a two-star hotel in lieu of a hostel. The Hotel Bossiere is a quite little hotel with minimal luxuries, but it serves its purpose. We get checked in and hit the streets for one last day in Paris.
There were a few things we did not experience on our first trip to Paris so this additional side trip is a bonus. We agreed to visit the catacombs, Notre Dame and a quick stop by the Moulin Rouge.
We jump on the Metro to scope out the city. We have mastered the art of traveling by the Metro. I’ll add that Paris’ Metro is rather simple to figure out once you have the map in hand. Our first stop
would be the Notre Dame, but we take a quick side trip to “The American Coffee House” for a quick coffee and tea. We had street side seats just around the corner from the Notre Dame. Another great opportunity to sit back and watch people. Although we were at “The American Coffee House” the waiter did not speaks English and Lynne tried to get some additional sugar for her tea. Lynne cracked me up when she said “I don’t think he understands American”. Now that was a funny slip of the tongue. As we sit enjoying our coffee and tea, we notice a van of police parked about 50 feet from us. Periodically Barney Fife gets out of the van and walks around. Lynne begins laughing and says to me “you ought to go tell him his fly is down.” I look over at Barney Fife and sure enough—not only is his fly down, but his shirt tail is hanging out of it. Now that’s a funny sight to see. We both get a good laugh, but I don’t budge from the table.
We headed over to the Notre Dame to marvel at the exterior of this majestic structure.
I will add that this is a very impressive structure to just sit back and look at. While we were in the square in front of the Notre Dame, we were bombarded by beggars and panhandlers. My tolerance for panhandlers has reached the limit. The metropolitan police make the attempt to run them off, but as soon as they turn their backs, they are right back in the action. It’s really a comical game of cat and mouse if you really think about it.
We step inside Notre Dame and are wowed with the beauty of this sanctuary in the middle of this busy city. The Norte Dame is one of the world’s most famous and visited gothic style cathedrals. Admission is free if you stay on ground level, but for a small nominal fee you can make the climb to the top for a spectacular view of the surrounding area. Once inside, we quickly realize that mass is about to begin. The odd thing about this is that there are hundreds of tourist milling around as mass begins. Now that’s something you don’t see every day. We make the quick rounds and head back outside. Again we are
approached by the relentless panhandlers and I am getting ready to kick one of them in the neck. Well, not really, but my patients is growing thin.
The weather is perfect and we walk the streets for a while before we jump on the Metro and head towards the Catacombs. The guidebook says to take the Metro to the Denfert-Rochereau Metro Station. We pop out from the Metro Station and sure enough—there it is. We look at the line of people waiting to go inside and it resembles a line at any Disney Park. We assess the line and try to determine if we will make the 4:00PM cut off for admission. While in line we chat with two students from UCLA and have a great time chatting with them as we wait our turn to enter the depths of the underground.
Time passes quickly and soon we find ourselves at the entrance. A very non-descript green structure with the admission window. Once inside, we work our way down the very narrow spiral staircase to the bowels of Paris. The catacombs were carved deep below the city when the demand for rock was huge in the early days of
the city. The catacombs are the remnants of these quarries. In the late 1700’s, Paris cemeteries became overcrowded and were plagued by repeated flooding. Officials believed this posed a serious health risk. As a result they issued a decree to transfer the remains to the catacombs. Bones from every cemetery were transferred to the catacombs until 1860. The result is a eerie sight to see. The remains of over 6 million Parisians now lie in rest in these catacombs deep beneath the city.
As we begin the 20 meter decent down the spiral staircase, the temperature begins to drop and adds to the spookiness of this weird adventure. We walk the damp corridors as we make our way through the maze of dimly lit paths. Some of the paths are blocked off to the public. As we round one corner, we begin to see the neatly stacked bones. The skulls are looking right at us as we make our way through the tunnels. This is the strangest sight we have seen so far. After walking some just a few minutes, we become a little overwhelmed with the magnitude of the amount of remains in these tunnels. We are now
committed to finish the tour. It’s not like watching a horror movie where you can just change the channel. We were trapped in this real life horror tour. We continue on the 2km tour and begin to wonder when it will end. Naturally I had to take a few photos, but the dim lighting did not allow for quality shots and flash photography was prohibited. I did manage to get a few photos with the assistance of my headlamp.
As we end the tour, we still have one additional challenge. We climb the narrow, spiral staircase back to ground level. This requires a little patience as people behind us are just as ready to leave this macabre site as we are. We emerge above ground and take a few moments to reflect on what we just witnessed. Wow, now that was a really bizarre experience.
We garb a quick bite to eat then head back to the Metro for yet another ride. This time the destination is the Moulin Rouge. We pop up from the Metro station just outside of the Moulin Rouge. Large tour groups hover around while everyone in the group takes photos in from of this
landmark. Lynne and I work our way into the midst of the crowds to get ours as well. Tickets for the show are outrageous and do not fit into our budget travel plans.
We close out the evening by heading back to the hotel to prepare for our next journey—Brussels.
As Lynne and I reflect on our Paris experience, we had a great time on both visits. I will add that big cities offer many glamorous opportunities, but also have a high concentration of less than desirable opportunities as well. We are beginning to dislike big cities, but many of the sites we plan to visit include some major cities. Give us small towns and villages any day and we would be most happy.
Stay tuned for our next update from Brussels, Belgium.
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