Paris
 

 
 

 

Paris

The train ride from Milan to Paris was a little more uncomfortable than I expected. I think I was even feeling train sick at one point, but that passed. We pulled into the train station mid-morning. We had been served a light breakfast of croissants and juice, so we were mostly awake. It was a couple block hike to the Metro subway station, and it was drizzling a little bit. We had been lucky so far on the vacation and only run into rain when we were traveling from town to town.

 
The view from our hotel room
Holding up three fingers and repeating, "trois jours. trois jours!" was enough to get us each a three-day subway pass. Our first stop was to head up to the music store district of Paris and to our hotel. Our neighbors Patricia and Herb had recommended this district, and I when I heard that this was where all the music instrument shops were, I was sold. Wouldn't you know, when we exited the train station, we had a one mile hike up a hill to our hotel. I was not surprised at all. After checking in the woman behind the desk pointed us towards the elevator. This thing was tiny! More like a tube than an elevator room, we had to cram ourselves in, and hold our bags up to get enough room. The dang door almost didn't shut.

The Tourist Stuff

 
Notre Dame
Lin-Wei had been to Paris before, so she wanted to get the tourist stuff out of the way. We hopped on the Metro and took it to the old island of Paris, to go to Notre Dame. But on our way there we got hungry, and we were able to find an open sushi shop! Yes! We order some sushi (the guy spoke perfect English) and we told him how happy we were to finally have sushi after a week and a half without it, but he got a cell phone call at the same time and totally ignored us. Got to Notre Dame, but as this was about the 4th big church we had seen on this trip, we thought it was cool, but not worth spending a lot of time there. Plus you couldn't get on the roof, so whatever. But in the Notre Dame square, they had done some excavations, and below ground was a museum that showed the ruins of more than one city that were built on the same spot. That was pretty cool seeing how each city was built on top of the previous ones, with Notre Dame sitting on top of all those ruins. Our next stop was probably the thing I was most looking forward to: The Paris catacombs! In addition to climbing old churches, my other passion is with tunnels and caves.
We hopped the train to the south-side of Paris, and found the entrance to the catacombs. I was surprised to find that it looked like a regular shop, but inside was the ticket office and some stairs leading down. You had to buy a ticket for a certain time, and we were hungry, so we got tickets for an hour later. Lin-Wei had been craving crepes, and right next store was a cute little crepe store. So we filled up on crepes, and I had a wine. We did go across the street to a street vendor for some dessert crepes, for some reason. But then the appointed hour came, and we headed down into the catacombs

 
Who's having fun on their honeymoon?
I was pretty excited to be going down there, because I had heard that there are miles of tunnels under the city of Paris. But also a little nervous, because I had also heard that these tunnels were filled with tens of thousands of bones. So we didn't really know what to expect. After descending quite a long time on the stairs, we had to follow a pretty standard, non-bone filled tunnel for about 10 minutes. But the light got darker, and we knew something was coming up. And then we saw it: rows upon rows upon rows of bones, all very neatly (and artistically arranged!) bones. Skulls, legs, arms all stacked neatly in rows.
 
Yes, it did feel weird posing for these pictures
Lin-Wei let out a little squeal of shock. The tour through the catacombs was pretty straight-forward. We could only move in one direction, but I could only imagine what else was down there hiding in those tunnels. It was fun listening to the other tourists comments down there. After about a half-hour walk we reached the end of the bones, and a metal stairway led up to the surface. The stairs led up to a guard station, where they searched us to make sure that we weren't carrying any bones out of there with us. When we exited the building, the doorway we came out of looked like a regular door to a house; nothing special about it at all. As I looked at the row houses on this street, I stood amazed that there was this whole just 100 feet below them!
Our final stop this evening was the Eiffel tower. Another sight I was really looking forward to, but one Lin-Wei had seen. We got the obligatory "I'm taller than the Eiffel Tower" shot, and then I got in line for tickets. Lin-Wei went off in search of a bathroom.
 
These pictures never fail to amuse me
The line was fairly long, but I got closer and closer to the front with no sign of Lin-Wei. Just then she showed up, with panic on her face, saying that she couldn't find an open bathroom. She got in line with me, and tried to convince me that we should come back later. "Don't worry, I'm sure there's a bathroom at the top," I said, all the time figuring that there probably wasn't, but we'd deal with that once we got up.

It takes three elevator rides to get to the top of the tower, and the view up there is pretty sweet. We got there at sunset, so I was able to fire up the sunset mode on the camera again. We met a cool American couple up there too, so we swapped stories about European travels. Oh, the bathroom? Yeah, sorry. Luckily for me, there were bathrooms up there, and for free! It was doubly nice, since I actually had to go too while we were up there. We took the elevators down, and I got a shot of the Eiffel Tower's butt, and we headed back to our hotel.

 
I was really freaked out seeing all those bones at first, but after awhile, you become nonchalant and think "oh, more bones", already seen it.
People don’t need to know when I need to use the restroom
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