Hey Michelle, if you went to a cemetery on your first day in Paris, what did you do the second day? Went to the Catacombs...and, you know, some other stuff.
Day 2 in Paris began with the yummy baguette and jam combo served at the hostel quickly followed by a visit to the Arc de Triomphe and the Champs-Elysees with Lauren. We decided it was best not the begin the day with burials two days in a row. We finally got to the Catacombs around noon. It's a decidedly eerie place. To get down to the actual catacombs, you have to go down an enclosed stone spiral staircase, so you can't see where you're going or if you're getting close to the bottom. It gets a little claustrophobic to say the least. After you get down the stairs, there's still about a 10 minute walk through tunnels until you reach the actual burials. I deal with bones a lot in my classes, but seeing human bones stacked like this on such a large scale was really intense. Neither me or Lauren expected to be as unnerved as we were.
After recovering from our trip below ground, me and Lauren wandered around Montmartre and went to see the Sacre-Coeur. We didn't go into the basilica, but we did meet a delightful Polish man who was working out front as a human statue. We heard him talking and thought he was Czech (Polish and Czech are very similar) so we went up to see if we were right. We weren't but he did tell us a story about how he had cheese once in a town outside of Brno in the Czech Republic that was better than any French cheese. Basically I rock because he told us this story in Polish and I actually understood what he was talking about! Two gold stars for Michelle!
Place de la Concorde with the Eiffel Tower in the distance
Rue Champs-Elysees with the Arc de Triomphe way far away
Champs-Elysees
Arc de Triomphe and the massive surrounding roundabout
Yup, that's me
After being around the arch in Washington Square Park for so long, the Arc just felt too big. Who needs something that big in the middle of the street, anyhow?
Is it possible that what I always assumed was my anxious disposition is actually a nervous disposition?
Entrance to the Catacombs
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