Paris Day 28

April 27, 2010

Day 28 Paris

We grabbed some hot drinks served free of charge in the basement in the hotel.  It was then time for our first destination: the Catacombs.  We had to wait in line for about 45min, but the time passed quickly because we ended up talking with the people behind us who were from New Zealand.  The Catacombs were crazy!  You had to walk down quite a few stairs and then had to walk about 400m in a dark tunnel before getting to some pretty cool stone carvings on display.  Finally we got to the bones.  It was insane.  There were bones stacked on top of one another in piles about 6 feet high.  In each pile there were usually 2 or 3 rows of sculls.  It went on for probably 500m or more!  It was incredible.  I thought it would be way creepier than it was.  I managed to take some pictures.  It was awesome.  As you left the Catacombs, they asked to check your bag because apparently people sometimes steal sculls!  Trevor had made a joke about it earlier, but I just thought he was being silly.  Turns out, he wasn't.  Next, we headed to the Notre Dame Cathedral where we ate lunch in the square in front.  We went inside and saw some nice stained glass and statues, but the line to get up to the top was too long and we figured we wouldn't have enough time.  So we headed next to the Panthéon where the original Foucault pendulum was.  It is also where a lot of famous people are buried including Marie Curie, Victor Hugo and others.  It was pretty cool.  I was able to take advantage of being under 26 and an EU citizen here and got in for free!  Next, we headed to the Musée des Arts et Métiers, another item in Trevor's Geek Atlas.  It was pretty cool, but I was already tired of museums and I was tired of walking, so I'm pretty sure I didn't appreciate it as much as I should have.  Finally, it was time to head to the main attraction in Paris, La Tour Eiffel.  We got there and we were like pros (having been there once before, before heading to Egypt).  We stood in line and made another friend.  We talked to this girl who was going up by herself while her family waited for her.  She was visiting from England, though she was originally from Croatia.  She was super nice and super nervous about going up to the top.  Trevor and I ended up buying tickets to go to the very top (level 3) while she decided, because she was afraid of heights, that she would only go to the second level.  We rode up and took a bunch of pictures, said our good byes and then Trevor and I headed for the 3^rd floor.  That floor was a lot smaller and super crowded.  Here you could buy champagne to drink (at 11 Euro a glass!)  The view was cool.  We decided to head back down, which meant waiting in line for the elevator that only took you to the second floor.  We decided to hang out here for a while again and take pictures of the sunset (very romantic).  While re-exploring the second floor, who do we bump into?  None other than the people we had talked to in Hendaye who were heading to Paris at the same time as us!  We then waited in line to get down to the ground, but in the elevator decided to stop on the first floor to look around.  It was a cool floor and we would have eaten at the restaurant, but it was way too expensive.  We took the stairs down from here and again bumped into the guys from Hendaye.  At the bottom, we decided it was time to eat and found ourselves a cute café that had a blocked view of the Eiffel Tower.  It was very enjoyable.  We headed back to the tower to take some last minute pictures and unfortunately due to me not feeling well we ended up heading back to the hotel (although it was 23:00 by this time!)  Trevor stayed up doing a bunch of hotel bookings for our next leg of traveling.  Then, off to bed to get ready for the next day of craziness!