Dem bones, dem bones...

Ahhh, Saturday morning--the weekend is finally here! What shall we do today? Since I was not able to purchase tickets to our Mont St. Michele trip online, we decided to go to the train station and figure it out there. Paris has six major train stations and who knows how many city train stations. We know which train we need and we know where it leaves from--so off we go to find it. After 2 or 3 unsuccessful waits in wrong lines, we get to where we need to be. We find a very nice young man who speaks English well and in fact grew up in that region where we are going.

We were a little apprehensive about this ticket because it is the first ticket using our Euro-Rail pass. The pass is good for only two months and so we cannot start using it until two months before we come home. Our trip to Mont St. Michele is on Oct 9-10 and our last train trip is on Dec 5th. The ticket agent wanted to validate the pass today, and I said nooooo, we can't validate it until we travel on October 9th. He was fine with that.

So we decide to go to Paris' Catacombs, which are nearby (just a short Metro ride away!) After arriving, we are getting hungry so rather than descending in the depths we decide to eat lunch first. Lo, and behold, Maridee spots another Mexican food cafe called Indiana. So we sit down to a couple of cokes and an order of Nachos Indiana (super nachos!) I have to admit they were pretty good and Maridee was in heaven. We decided we could make those here, so that's on our grocery list for next time.


The story of the catacombs is, that Paris was full of underground quarries from all the rock they were using for construction. In the 1700's, there was some wild disease (the plague!) going around and people were dying everywhere. Pretty soon, they could see the problem of where to bury everyone, because there wasn't anymore room at the Church cemeteries. So they decided to utilize the miles of under ground tunnels from the quarries. They exhumed everyone from the churches and relocated them in the
catacombs. There are between 6 to 7 million Parisians laid to rest there. Of course there are no longer any individual grave markers. They just kept everyone from the same cemetery together (so to speak) and put a stone marker with a code that told them which cemetery these bones were from.

After going down a steep spiral staircase some 60-80 steps, you walk down the narrow corridors about four feet wide and sometimes only six feet tall, sometimes taller. The entire walk is about a mile long and you do not end up where you started from. Mostly all you see are leg bones and skulls. I don't know where all the rest of the bones were. They were either discarded or they are piled in behind the others. The outer "wall" of bones are just the bones of the knee (I don't know what they are called)! You have the lower leg bone that comes up to the knee and you have the
upper leg bone that goes down to the knee. The bones are just stacked up with the "knee end" facing outward. After the "wall" is six feet high of knee joints--that's all you see! They used skulls as "decorative items"! Sometimes they made one layer of skulls across the center of the "wall", sometimes they made interesting patterns with the skulls! Anyway, it was all very interesting. One other thing--in some areas of the walk, there was water (?) dripping down from the ceiling. I assured Maridee that by the time water oozed...I mean, filtered to this depth, I'm sure it could be considered purified!

One positive thing about this long, underground walk was it was rather cool down there. We are still pretty warm here in Paris but are totally amazed at how people dress. They wear long sleeve shirts, a sweater, a coat and a scarf. It can be so hot and humid out and they still dress like it is winter. The metro's are especially hot and sticky and people are dressed like winter time. We don't get it. They must think something is wrong with us as we are always fanning ourselves and sweating. I bet that's what gives us away as not being Parisian!

We just got back from the best Fajitas cafe here in Paris. We got chicken and they were delicious! I think my Mexican food craving is satisfied. While we were there it started raining and of course the only time we didn't have an umbrella was now! We also had to do our daily grocery shopping so it was quick and to the point. Remember, we carry everything from here to there so we make it light! It will get us through tomorrow. Print this post