Oct 30th The Catacombs

Thursday - Jeudi

The morning coffee routine was rudely interrupted by a very Parisian-looking photo shoot happening at Chaize.  “C’est fermé, aujourd’hui,” (We are closed today) said the perfectly chic young woman to the sad old American man holding out his cardboard carrying tray, recycled from yesterday, despondent.  Now what?  Well, OK, just next door is a cafe.  Whatever.

The blessed Metro. The magical underground that transports you anywhere.

We Metro’d our long way to the meeting place for the Catacombs tour which turned out to be just in front of the entrance.  Not some tree or church yard, just the place itself.  We were part of a group of around fifteen and after the guide asked if anyone was claustrophobic and/or afraid of  the dark (Ding! Ding! for me) I nonetheless kept the impending panic to myself and instead volunteered to be the “last person” in the group so that our guide Riti (Indian, about 25) would know when the group had arrived intact at any future stopping points. 

As for me, I reasoned that as the last one in the group, I would then be first if anything went wrong and we had to make a quick exit.  The last shall be first and all that.  The group then entered and descended the 130 circular steps down into the tunnels of limestone and the walls of bones ahead.  The two hour tour was amazing and our group was treated to a couple of personalized moments unavailable to the single-o’s.

Two or three hundred kilometers of this. Dug mostly by children and small horses all of whom went blind and died young. Grab a postcard at the gift shop!.

The vast limestone tunnels, turns out, were dug and maintained mostly by children who went blind from the darkness and died young and small horses who lived and died short blind lives dragging the heavy cut stones out to vertical tunnels called wells up which they were delivered to the builders of Paris by a guy on a human hamster wheel.  So, yeah.

The work of a tragic prisoner.

More handiwork by the doomed man.

Some guy got imprisoned down there and spent his time carving an exact replica of a view he had had from another prison which he did apparently faithfully, but then got crushed to death when part of his sculpture collapsed. You can smell the joy.

There are hundreds of kilometers of tunnels and currently hundreds of “cataphytes” who know and sort of guard and watch the tunnels.  They also apparently have an invite-only ball once a year.  So French.

At some point the whole city collapsed into a giant hole until better structural ideas came along and then as the cemeteries filled up and rains came and washed, you know, human stuff, all over the market, they eventually started dumping the bones down the wells (stones up, bones down) where sections of the catacombs were consecrated by priests and the bone stacks (built by the quarrymen, “We have to do what?”) were arranged by cemeteries beginning in the late 1700’s and stopped in the late 1800’s.  So, about 6 million skeletons laid to rest in neat walls of what looks like femurs and skulls, with the smaller parts like ribs and, well, I guess pelvises in the middle somewhere and metacarpals at the back.  All I know is that we were told that if you brush up against them, they’ll collapse and you’ll owe them 10,000 euros for a restacking job.  A very macabre Southwest Airlines TV commercial.

Like Disney's Haunted Mansion if 6 million people's bones were shown on the ride.

After we bid our guide adieu, we walked on. Walking along Montparnasse, we stopped for a bourguignon  and wine at Chez Papa. 

Aiming for the Eiffel Tower, we passed by the Musèe de Armies which is a stunning place, which includes church with Napoleon’s tomb and such.  It was closing for the day so became just another thing to do next time.

Keeping the Eiffel in sight we arrived just in time for the first set of the sparkly lights show, but decided against entry to the tower itself due to the massive crowds and shoved our way toward the Seine which we walked for a couple of miles, at some point witnessing some fireworks at what might be Disney Paris somewhere in there.

Getting weary, we took a long train and Metro ride home and discovered what may be the best restaurant we have yet found, Orso, which also happens to be the one closest to our apartment.  It’s got nothing but 5 star reviews and, looking to get dessert for the evening finish, we ended up getting a bottle of wine, Normandy oysters and an insane onion beignet (twice) before finishing up with desserts. The waiter, Gaspar, was raised in France but speaks in an exact London accent due to his upbringing by ex-pat Brits.  The place seats about 30 and we have reservations for tonight.

Crying tears of joy. The woman behind me some kind of quiet genius.