A Crappy Start to a Nice Day

"Last time on... My France Trip...", we'd visited Versailles -- and had actually gotten through a day without a misfortune. So naturally, misfortune visited us right away the next day. While seated at the tables in front of this morning's breakfast boulangerie, a pigeon on the edge of the building high above pooped directly on my husband's head. I have no picture. (I know, you're broken up about that.) He kept his cool as I dug out the wet wipes he'd smartly packed in our backpack, then cleaned him up. Crisis managed. Still, ew.

It was smooth sailing from there, though, and began with one of the best experiences of the entire trip: a visit to the Catacombs of Paris. All that stone for Notre-Dame and all those other fancy buildings in and around Paris? It came from somewhere, specifically from beneath the city itself. The extensive quarrying left a maze of tunnels beneath the city. And in the late 1700s, those tunnels were put to a new use. With cemeteries overflowing all over Paris, the decision was made to relocate the remains to a vast ossuary beneath the city. By the time the relocation was completed, the remains of over six million people had been placed there.

A self-guided tour of the Catacombs (with audio narration provided) takes you first through empty tunnels -- themselves an impressive sight. Then you enter the ossuary, where the seemingly endless piles of bones are a stark reminder that all are equal in death. Indeed, while many famous people are known to be resting in the Catacombs somewhere (because they were in the cemeteries that were emptied out), it's now impossible to know whether any given skull you look at might be Robespierre... or someone whose story is lost to history.

 

We had some time before the next activity we'd bought tickets for, so we decided on a leisurely walk toward Jardin du Luxembourg. We didn't run across anything worth stopping for until we came to a smaller park to the south of the garden, with a fountain I'd later learn is called the "four parts of the world fountain." The sculptures themselves suggest that the four parts might be fish, naked people, turtles, and horses -- specifically, turtles spitting water in horses' faces. Fun.

The Luxembourg Garden is a large public park right next to the senate building in Paris. The government building is closed to the public, but the garden is open to all. And we were so struck by the beautiful scenery that we decided it would make a perfect spot for another "picnic lunch" -- we grabbed fresh bread, meats, cheese, and wine from a nearby store, then brought them back to the park to enjoy the view.

Before we got back on the metro, we took a few minutes to catch a glimpse of the nearby Panthéon, a monument and mausoleum dating back over 200 years. We didn't have time to venture inside, though; we had 2:00 tickets to visit the Louvre Museum.

And as you could imagine, talking about the Louvre is worth a post of its own... which I'll pick up tomorrow.