Les Bones, Les Bones

We woke up yesterday morning facing the tourist’s existential dilemma.  We were in Paris on a Saturday—how could we make the most of limited time? It’s the ultimate exercise in prioritization.  What did we most want to see, how much time would that take, and what else could we fit in?

Our top priority was clear.  J.D.’s “must-see” in Paris was the Catacombs tour, which allows you to walk for a mile 60 feet below the streets of Paris past the stacked up bones of six million anonymous Parisians.

The Catacombs are open from 10-5, and so we planned to arrive right as it opened in order to minimize the one-hour wait predicted by the guidebooks.  There was no way the line could be as long as the line in Rome for the Vatican Museum had been, and in fact it wasn’t, but at 10 a.m. it already wrapped around the block.

What we didn’t know is that the line also doesn’t move very fast.  They only allow approximately 150 people down into the Catacombs at any one time, so the line crept along, and it took close to three hours until we were actually able to go in.

Fortunately for me, the line wrapped around a block that contained a small city park, and out of respect for my knees, Shelley and J.D. gave me permission to go sit on a bench until the line reached the other side of the park.  That probably saved the day for me, because just standing for a long time is utter agony.   

I used my time on the park bench to people- and pigeon-watch.  There was a man sunning himself and reading the newspaper on a bench he had apparently slept on.  Another man hung his socks to dry in the sun on a railing, and they were done before I left, meaning that the line, if not slow enough to watch paint dry, was slow enough to watch socks dry.

I watched the pigeons foraging for food, walking around my bench and feet, unconcerned by my presence.  That ended when a bird buffet arrived in the form of a woman feeding the birds.  I also watched other families who were taking turns waiting in line while others sat in the park.  One mother and daughter from Ottawa sat next to me, and the mom commented that she has never seen Paris this crowded.  We later ran into the family holding up the line in the Catacombs while listening to the audio tour for each site.  There was a guitarist wearing a Hard Rock Café Shanghai t-shirt while accompanying his Ipad, and right before I left the park and got back in line a guy came through on a Solowheel, which is a gyro-stabilized form of transportation like a Segway, but more like a unicycle in that there are no handles to hold on to.

Once we arrived at the front of the line and were admitted by the Maitre D’, the Catacombs tour took about 45 minutes.  We went down a long spiral staircase which almost gave us vertigo, then went through a section devoted to the geology of the Catacombs, which were emptied out in the 18^th and 19^th centuries to use the limestone for construction purposes.  Then, when the cemeteries in Paris became overcrowded, someone came up with the idea of using the Catacombs as an ossuary, as a place to store bones, and the second part of the tour goes through lots and lots of neatly stacked bones, with regular bones separated by rows of skulls.  I wondered how many of them represented victims of the French Revolution, because some of the bones dated back to 1788 or 1790, while J.D. had read somewhere that some of the bones may have been from plague victims.

At the end of the tour you enter the street through an innocent looking doorway on a residential street, and I wondered what it would be like for your next door neighbor to be the exit to the Catacombs.  There is the obligatory gift shop, but we didn’t see anything we had to have, although J.D. liked a poster with the instructive and uplifting advice, “Keep calm and remember that you will die.”

The length of time required for the Catacombs meant that it was unlikely that we were going to be able to go to Les Invalides, the second thing on J.D.’s list, and as it was after 2:00 we were hungry and fried.  We tried to get lunch at a little café, but the waiter didn’t understand that we might want to eat in addition to drink, so we finished our drinks and walked looking for another spot.  Just walking down the street in Paris is invigorating and educational, and you never know what you might see.  When I was here in the summer of 2001, I was walking down the street minding my own business when none other than Bill Clinton and James Carville, in town to see the French Open tennis tournament, walked right by me along with an entourage of Secret Service agents. 

When we arrived back at the entrance to the Catacombs, we decided to hop on the Metro and get lunch back by our hotel.  The walk from the Metro stop took us through the campus of the Sorbonne, one the world’s great universities.  We then ate and rested, until Shelley pointed out that it was Saturday afternoon in Paris and we were spending it in a tiny hotel room.

We walked to Ile de la Cite, one of two islands in the middle of the Seine that make up the old heart of Paris.  The signature site on the island is Notre Dame cathedral, and we went in.  On the outside the cathedral is beautiful, with its spires, rose window, and gargoyles, but J.D. noticed signs of disrepair inside.  In the middle a mass was being conducted, but tourists were able to walk all around the outer part of Notre Dame, including behind the altar.  There was an exhibit showing the architectural timeline of Notre Dame’s building over a 700-year period, and J.D. hoped to find a book at the bookstore detailing that development, without success.

From Notre Dame we walked down alongside the river.  During the month of July the city of Paris imports tons of sand so that there is a “beach” alongside the Seine, complete with umbrellas and beach chairs, and we walked along until we got to the other island, Ile St. Louis.  We walked around it looking for a place to eat dinner, and Shelley decided she wanted crepes, so we had both crepes for dinner and dessert, accompanied by the traditional French beverage to accompany crepes, hard cider.  It was all very good.  We then headed back to the hotel through Ile de la Cite, stopping to get a better, more classic view of Notre Dame from its back side and looking at the cadenzas, or love locks, on the Pont des Arts, one of the bridges over to the Left Bank.  It has become tradition to attach a padlock with a message on the side of the bridge in honor of loved ones.

In a place like Paris there is always more to do and more to see, but just being in Paris is valuable and worthwhile no matter what you’re doing.  We arrived at the end of the day satisfied with what we’d accomplished and grateful for the opportunity to be in Paris together.