Last night I took and shower and went to bed about 11:30pm. We got up this morning about 7:15, got and ready for our day of adventure. We went down and got breakfast from the hotel in the lobby. I had a croissant, some really good cheese (maybe brie?), a slice of ham, and some fruit. I'm having a very hard time keeping to my gluten-free and vegan diet over here because everything is SO GOOD and I just want to eat it all!!
After breakfast we walked up the street to the metro stop where we took two different trains to get to the catacombs. SO COOL! We got there about 45 minutes before they opened and there was already quite a line. But once they opened we go in quickly. The catacombs are in a former lime quarry (mine). Back in the day (end of the 1700's) they needed more room in the city's cemeteries so they dug up all the bodies that were in the cemeteries and stacked them all down in this quarry. There are 6 million skeletons down there. It's a little bit overwhelming, and a very solemn experience to be down there, to see all those bones and think about all the people who are down there. (I hope it's not too hard, in the Second Coming/Resurrection, for those people to find all their missing parts! Kristy said there's probably going to be certain angels assigned specifically to these 6 million people to help get everything sorted out.) To get down into the quarry/mine you take this really tight spiral staircase down about a million miles (only slightly exaggerating) and wind your way through all these dark tunnels. Then suddenly you come to this big open space with all these big arches and that leads you into the actual catacomb part with all the bones.
After walking through the (what seemed like) miles of tunnels, we climbed the steps up and out and we got back onto the metro. On the way we stopped at a crepe stand and got our first real Parisian crepes! We both got one with nutella and bananas. So good!
We tried to find a smashed penny machine for Kristy that she had looked up the location for online before we left the States. It was supposed to be at the big tall sky-scraper" Tour Maine-Montparnasse. But we couldn't find it. You could pay to ride the elevator up to the top, but neither of us wanted to pay for it (we realized later that our Paris Pass would have gotten us up there, but we didn't know it at the time.)
Next stop: Notre Dame.
The craftsmanship and architecture of this magnificent building left me in awe. There is a crypt (not sure why they call it this becuase there's no dead bodies down there...) down under the square in front of the cathedral that has some of the ancient archeaological finds of the origins of Paris from the initial Roman take over. It was fascinating to see these origianl foundations of the city.
Out side the cathedral is "point zero" - the center of town and where Paris originally started.
Once inside I was blown away. It is just as amazing inside, if not more, than it is from the outside. We spent a lot of time walking through and admiring the majectic beauty of this church. We sat for a few minutes in the center section just taking it all in. We wanted to be there when they did mass, becuase neither of us has ever been to a Catholic mass and thought it would be interesting, but the timing didn't work out. Bummer.
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Next, we walked around the cathedral, admiring the gardens. While we were walking there was the fattest pigeons I'd ever seen in my life milling around on the grass. There were rows of apartments on the other side of the river across from the cathedral and I was jealous. What an incredible view to have everyday outside your window!
We went across the street to a memorial that has been built to honor the French victims of the holocaust during WWII. It's a very nice memorial right on the river. Very solemn. They don't let you take any pictures, and you don't want to because you know how special and sacred a place it is. After that, we walked across the bridge to Ill St.-Louis. We had plans to go to a grocery store we had located on a map last night, pick up some things and have a picnic for lunch. But, the store was closed. Bummer! So we walked back over to Notre Dame and ended up eating at a cafe on the north side of the cathedral. We had some Fanta and Croque-Monsieurs (basically just a toasted ham and cheese sandwich), both of which were really good and hit the spot!
After lunch we walked down to Sainte-Chappelle. While we were waiting in line it seemed like the French military was scrambling every jet they had. We kept watching as groups of three or four different fighter jets and military aircraft flew overhead. There were probably 30 or 40 planes that flew over in the 20 minutes we were standing there. Kind of unnerving. We began to wonder if France has declared war on someone and we should perhaps be a little worried...One of the guys standing next to us in line heard us talking about it and said not to worry, that they were "just praciticing" for Bastille Day (French Revolution) on Sunday. I'm still not sure I believe that's what was going on...
Once we got inside the church, however, I forgot all about the military fly-over. The AMAZING stained glass windows take your breath away! The windows and carvings in the stone walls depict the creation and other scenes from the Bible and Christian history like Adam and Even getting cast out of Eden, Cain and Able, and Noah and the Arc. Again I am left speechless and in awe of the workmanship of those ancient craftsmen. This chapel only took 5 years to complete which is incredible. Notre Dame took 200!
After the Chappelle we went to the Conciergerie, which is the prison where everyone (including Marie-Antoinette) was kept and tried during the French Revolution before being sent to the guillotine.
After that we were done with most of what we wanted to do for the day. We went back to the metro to head back to our hotel. It was rush hour time on the metro. All the trains were PACKED, so we ended up sitting down there for about an hour waiting for one we felt comfortable getting on.
We found a small market a couple blocks away from where we were staying. We got some bread and cheese to have for dinner. Yummy! I ate an apple I had brought from home as well. We rested for a bit, letting our feet recover from walking around all day. My feet hurt! Despite having good shoes. We are walking so much it's crazy. I brought my little fitbit walking pedometer to keep track of how much we walk everyday, just because I'm curious to see.
After resting for a little bit we walked up the street to the Arc de Triomphe. We used our Paris Pass to get us entrance up to the top. So cool, but SO MANY STAIRS! The theme of today has been: never-ending spiral staircases. Good grief! No wonder Parisians are so skinny. The view from the top of the Acr was awesome! And I'm proud of myself for making it up there. We saw the Eiffel Tower all lit up-beautiful. We were going to try and do the bus tour we did yesterday afternoon and see the city sights at night, but they stopped running the tours at 6:30 and we weren't done at the Arc until 11pm. Oh well. While we were up there we watched all the crazy traffic down below in the circle surrounding the Arc. Apparantly there are so many car accidents there every year that the insurance companies here don't even argue about it and try to figure out who's fault it was, they just split the costs 50/50. One guy we were standing next to said there needs to be a reality show where people have to learn to drive in Paris and survive driving in the circle around the Arc! LOL. I told him that was a great idea and I would totally watch that show!
We finally walked back to our hotel, stopping at the little grocery store again on the way to by Kristy a Sprite and we got some Nutella to put on the bread we bought earlier. There is Nutella everywhere here. They love it!
Exhausting day, but we're having so much fun! I can't believe all the things we've seen and done. Tre Manifique!!
Steps walked today: 18,261 (not counting two hours this morning before the device refreshed itself at midnight AZ time)
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