Last day in Paris
Day 5
Early start today…..Notre Dame church was first on the list. A beautiful building with Gothic style architecture, it’s groundbreaking dates back to 1163! Because we are visiting during the ‘off season’ we were able to walk right up to the church and go inside – during ‘busy season’ long line ups are commonplace. See pics here.
Next, the Catacombs. The Catacombs gather the remains of approximately six million Parisian, transferred between the end of the 18 century and the middle of the 19th century, due to the closing of cemeteries for reasons of crowding and unsanitary conditions. We arrived shortly after 10am (when it opened) and were surprised to find a very long line up along the street, and we were behind a large school group – took about 1/2hr to be admitted. The catacombs are underground, and we walked down a long spiral staircase (19metres underground) and walked through narrow passageways to get to the bones. If you are picturing an underground mine lined with neatly stacked skulls and bones, you are right on the money – it is exactly that. Tunnel upon tunnel of bones, bones and more bones. A really interesting place, but admittedly, Kristin found it to be a bit too macabre after a while. No flash photography is allowed in the tunnels (not that people followed this but Jim did), so Jim used his photography skills to get great pictures (see here and here).
After the long walk through the tunnels, we were in need of a washroom. This has been at times difficult in Paris to find. However, we happened upon a toilet on the side of the road – we had come across these occasionally – and decided to give it a whirl. It was a large structure with buttons on the side of it, one indicating that it was not in use and we pushed it to open the door. We both walked in, but the door would not shut because it (the washroom that is) realized that two people had walked in, and there was only one toilet (understandably, having two people being allowed in the washroom on the street could lead to an infinite number of issues). Kristin used it first. After using the toilet, and vacating the washroom, it (the washroom that is) goes through a ‘cleaning’ cycle, where it literally washes everything in it using water jets. When the next person walks in, the washroom is wet, having had gone through this cycle. Interesting….seemed a bit odd, but it sure came in handy for us.
We had lunch out, at a very crowded restaurant, where we were literally shoulder to shoulder with the next table. This seems to be the norm – I guess in a busy city, space is at a premium and it appeared that many restaurants were like this.
Next tourist stop – Sacre Coeur – another beautiful church, this one in the Montmartre district. Unfortunately, most tourist stops have a number of ‘resourceful crooks’ where you have to be really careful or you will get pick-pocketed or worse. There are signs everywhere warning of this, and here we were mobbed by young women asking for our signature for some ’cause’. Knowing that this was a scheme (if you take the time to sign, you can be assured that your wallet and any other belongings they can get their hands on will be gone) we quickly got out of there with Kristin literally having to push them away as they will not take no for an answer. Too bad – often it is these situations that fouls the attraction itself.
We carried on, and took the metro to Les Invalides – a complex of buildings which now serves as the military museum, a retirement home, and a hospital. Really, this stop was just to view the architecture of the main building – it is expansive with a large gold dome at its centre. It was during the walk from the metro to the complex that we came across quite a loud muslim demonstration outside of the national buildings – we could not make out what the protest was about, but the streets were lined with both Prefecture Police (sort of like our municipal or city police) and the National Police (sort of like our RCMP), ready in riot gear if needed. Needless to say, we didn’t stick around for long. We didn’t want to get in the middle of it.
We finished the long day with a visit to Musee d’Orsay, where we took in some art by Monet, Degas, Renoir, Cezanne, Gaugin, Van Gogh and the like. Neither one of us are overly ‘artsy’, but it was impressive standing only inches away from such well known artists.
Ahhh, a busy day and we were happy to pick up some dinner at the market to take home and rest our feet. We packed our bags, as we are leaving tomorrow for London!
Overall, we loved Paris – much more than we anticipated. A beautiful city, where we found everyone willing to help us when we needed it (our French is embarrassingly awful). A city where we saw not one overweight Parisian – they all are quite thin and always look well-kept and stylish. It is a city that appears to wake up later in the day, but is active late at night. We hope to return one day….it would be beautiful in the spring, but I’m afraid we wouldn’t be able to deal with the incredible crowds that would undoubtedly be present.
See pics here.
Kristin
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