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Paris is basically like any other stinkin' city: too much traffic, a bunch of old dirty buildings, subways, too many people… It was a hassle getting around and we suffered daily. However, being the savvy tourists that we are, we sought out those special things
that make Paris so especially
unlike the United States.
For instance, the bones of
seven million people neatly
stacked in long tunnels
a hundred feet underground. The Catacombes are just such a collection.
Apparently, the Romans created
these tunnels eons ago, god
knows why, but they were later
used, sometime in the 17th
century, for mass bone storage. Why? Well, it seems that after a certain point, when people have been
dying for an awfully long time,
and everybody's being buried in
cemeteries...sooner of later
the Dead are just taking up too
much space. So all these
bones were unearthed (with solemn
ceremony and all that) and
carried down to this underground
storage, neatly arranged in decorative
patterns, with signs to catalogue
the source of each pile.
We also saw the Notre Dame
(covered with scaffolding),
The Dali museum (nice, weird),
the Eiffel Tower (but didn't go
up), and the Monmartre. The
Pompadu Center was closed for
renovation...and did I mention the
Louvre? --They were on strike.
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