First trip to Paris

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We went into Paris for the day! Overall it was a pretty nice time. We took the RER into the city and then basically stood around looking lost until we realized where the metro was. Luckily I brought my Little Black Book of Paris along, which has a metro map in the back. It also lists famous monuments and which lines take you to them. It ended up being very helpful.

Anyway, first we went to the Eiffel Tower, which is beautiful, by the way. It was really foggy and drizzling a bit, so after walking several blocks, it was amazing to see it between some buildings, all misty through the fog. It was pretty chilly out, so we looked through the list of indoor things we wanted to see: Musee d'Orsay, the Catacombs...We got back on the train and headed toward the Musee. When we got there we saw maybe 50 people in line! We decided to go to the mall instead. We stopped for a yummy lunch at Pomme de Pain. When we got back to the metro, it was snowing! Ridiculous!

Our next place to try was the Catacombs. We got off the metro in Montparnasse and saw a sign, but that was it. We just kind of wandered around and suddenly there was this weird little building with a door and some laminated signs on it. Admission was 7 euros, but since we're under 26 we only paid 3.50. Nice. The Catacombs are not a good place to go if you: a) have a bad knee, or b) don't like cramped spaces, or c) get creeped out by stacks of bones in the dark. You go down about a million steps on a spiral staircase and honestly walk about three miles in creepy little corridors before you get to the intro/museum part of all of it. So it was a quarry first, in the early 1700s, but then in the late 1700s it was decded that cemeteries were a threat to public health. So for 100 years all the bones from the major cemeteries were transferred into this converted quarry. The remains of 6 million people are kept there now. It's cramped, muddy, wet (like a cave), but it's really cool and worth going to see. I was really uncomfortable for the first 1/2 but then I kind of got used to it. It was nice to get inside for a while and dry off!

We exited the Catacombs and basically had no idea where we were. I'm thinking like miles away from the start. We just started walking and came across this crepe stand called Fred. Yum...crepes with Nutella. They were our first crepes in France and they were so delicious. We chatted a bit with the guy--he asked us if we were students and when we said yes, he said, "Oh I thought so, that's why you speak French so well." We all finished our crepes before we were even on the metro platform.

After our amazing crepes, we went back to the Tower and took some photos. We also stopped a gift shop so we could all buy postcards. When we got back to Cergy, we stopped and bought some spaghetti and sauce, and some bottles of water. Lots of postcards to write out and classes start on monday!!

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