Our aim on Friday was to get to the Paris catacombs by about 9:30am for a 10:00am opening, thinking that we would be just a few of a handful of people who had this brilliant idea of beating the queues to get in. And while we arrived only about 20 minutes later than intended, the line was already down the street, past where we joined the queue the day before, and around to the corner. I began to delude myself, thinking that it was still before opening time and the line would magically disappear.
Two and a half hours later we entered the catacombs. Luckily there was a patisserie nearby so we had a croissant and palmier and something to drink to tied us over.
They limit the number of people in the catacombs to 200 yet once we got inside, you rapidly lose people and we may as well have been down there by ourselves. We hired audio guides and, in an act of soppy cuteness and practicality, coordinated the pressing of each number so we’d always be listening to the same thing together. This helped for the times when we were close to each other and, with the volume up and the guides looped around our necks so we didn’t have to hold them to our ears, the audio tracks echoed.
This audio guide was much better than the one at Sainte-Chapelle. There were only 21 stations throughout the 45-minute experience and as it was stretched over approximately 2 km, we didn’t have to linger to wait for one part to finish before moving on to the next one.
We heard how the limestone quarries beneath the city of Paris became a big problem and huge crevasses opened up beneath the streets and buildings, taking people with them. This, however, is not the origin of the catacombs, which came about in the late 1700s because there wasn’t enough space in the graveyards.
Built outside the city walls, the catacombs became huge repositories of bones that had been dug up and tossed into the pits. There was some arrangement, with different graveyard plots being stored together, and a highly romanticised method of arranging the bones was employed.
At first it’s a little odd to see all these skulls and leg bones and arm bones, and having to be careful not to back up against a whole bunch of them, but, as with most things, you quickly become accustomed and continue on your journey. I laughed when the guide talked about young people in the 1800s holding a secret party there with death music such as Danse Macabre playing in the chambers.
We reached the end, finished listening to our audio guide, peered up at the large subsidence hole, and then ascended the steps back to the world of the living. I’m glad we went, even if it meant waiting for 2.5 hours to get in.
We stopped for lunch at a nearby Thai restaurant before catching trains back home. Glen and I separated at Concorde with him going home and me going to Musee de l’Orangerie to see Monet’s Les Nymphéas. No queue to get in and the rooms where the paintings are housed weren’t as busy as I expected. I sat for a while in one room, enjoying the surrounding light and colour, before moving into the next, which had even fewer people in it.
The rooms have a glass ceiling with a white shade cloth beneath. When the clouds moved in front of the sun, they made a shadow in the room and on the paintings, which gave the added impression of the shade moving across the surface of the water. It was subtle yet so beautiful.
I had a quick look at the gallery downstairs but my feet were killing me and I was eager to get home and have a rest before we went out again. I walked back to the apartment through le jardin des Tuileries and got home to nap with Glen for about 30 minutes. Then we were up and out to meet Hieu, a friend of Glen’s living in Paris.
We met at St Paul Metro and went for tea and cake at Le Loir dans la Theieri. They caught up and we met for the first time, finding out about each other’s lives. It was fun and also nice to hear from an Australian, even if they have been living in Paris for eight years, lucky thing. We then caught the train to Bastille and went for a walk on the Parisian equivalent of New York’s Highline, except this one was called Viaduc des Arts and is older and longer. It’s beautiful at this time of year with the trees full of leaves. It has the added benefit of taking you up out of the way of the traffic and seeing Paris from a higher elevation.
We didn’t get to walk the whole thing (which takes about 45 minutes), instead turning around halfway to walk back to the train. Hieu had movie tickets, while we returned to St Paul in the Marais and searched for dinner. We walked around a bit. I got stopped by a couple of Hassidic Jews asking if I were Jewish and then not believing me when I said no.
We walked in a circle before eventually choosing to stop at a tapas place called Casa San Pablo. The place was doing a roaring trade so we figured it must be good. We squeezed into a table, and ordered some tapas, some wine and some water. The food was really quite good. We had a potato omelette, champignons, calamaris frites, tomato and cheese bread, and grilled prawns (hands down the best thing we ate). I asked for water about three times but it never came. We noticed that no one else had water on their table so it probably wasn’t the done thing.
It wasn’t exactly late when we finished, and it was still light, but we were both worn out (probably from standing in the sun waiting to see the bones) that we opted to head home and sit on the couch. We have plans to go to Troyes tomorrow on the plane but it involves leaving at 6:42am so we need to be up early. Who’s bright idea was that?!
Travels with Dan 
What do you say, eh?