A more unusual sight seeing adventure is the catacombs. There is no quick way to see this site - it is a two hour plus wait in line even when you arrive hours before it opens - which is what we did But we are crazy so of course we did - what’s another 2 hours in the grand scheme. We met a young couple from Atlanta that had a few days in London and a few in Paris and wanted to see this too. We swapped travel, and life stories, to pass the time. Sixty feet under the city there was an abandoned quarry that in the past provided stone for the many building projects in Paris. The health-conscious Paris Authority created the Paris Municipal Ossuary, known today as the Catacombs. The quarry was concecrated on the 7th of April 1786. Church cemeteries were emptied and for decades, priest led ceremonial processions of bone-laden carts into the quarries. The Paris catacomb is the largest underground necropolis in the world - over 6 million skeletons - and surprisingly only takes up 1/800 of the available space in the quarry. This is an experience unlike any other we have seen, bar none. The bones are stacked in piles five or six feet high and as much as 80 feet deep. It is cold and dark and takes an hour to get thru the tunnels with bones and more bones and more bones. There are signs carved in the walls as you go, in French of course, but with the audio guide you learn that the first sign says “halt, this is the empire of the dead.” A black line was drawn on the ceiling by the king, who brought special people down to see this, and now helps visitors find their way. The audio guide even told of a party with an orchestra that was held in the catacombs for the Parisian elite.
You climb the 86 steps to exit and emerge far from where you entered - your shoes full of white limestone. At the top they check your bags to make sure you do not take someone with you.
The rest of the afternoon was chill-time to do laundry, catch up with the blog and to book hotels and travel to the other cities we are heading to. We decided we need more days like this to keep up with our travel needs and to catch some good sleep before jumping into the next adventure. At every turn there is a test of your ability to understand a new situation or system and it is fun. We are getting quicker at picking up the clues and move faster into the new environments. What fun. The next adventure…Normandy and a car rental.
You walk for quite a while in the quarry tunnels - the audio-guide explaining how the walls and ceilings are kept where they need to be based on various engineering techniques - and also about past cave-ins. It’s a bit claustrophobic and you find yourself breathing a little faster hoping the next cave-in will not be any time soon. This part of the tunnel is where it opens up and you can see the engineering they were explaining.
Every once in a while you would find these artistic patterns and a stone revealing the cemetery where these bones were from.
Is that Harry Potter's skull? (lightening bolt on forehead)
Six feet under times 10 - here we are below the subways and water works of Paris - it goes on and on.
Our view while doing laundry - not bad Paris - this is one beautiful city.