Dying to see the Catacombs

Arrete! C'est ici l'empire de la mort! - Stop! Here lies the Empire of Death!

Foodie moment

When I pictured our time camping in France I always imagined us sitting in the sun having wine and cheese. Today it happened - heaven! Sorry no photos as we were too comfortable and content to get up and find the camera!

Cultural moment

The public toilets (like many things in Paris - eg forming queues) are a prime example of inefficiency. They are the automatic type, but after each person they do a full clean meaning the time waiting can be 7 minutes per person! More queues!

Wow moment

As part of my Christmas present from Lisa, I got 2 tickets to go and see the catacombs of Paris. I had heard of them before and had always wanted to see them. So after a little wait in line, we descended into the underground of Paris. The catacombs were originally tunnels dug as a quarry for limestone used to build most of the buildings in the city. In the 1700's, because of over saturation of Paris's cemeteries and risk of infection, all of Paris dead were exhumed from their graves and manually transported into the mines. There are now over 6 million peoples remains in the catacombs! It took over 3 years of transporting the bones of the dead every night to complete the task. The amount of bones we witnessed was staggering, and you can only see what's at the front of the piles. There are millions stacked underground in the catacombs. It was a very eerie and surreal experience and the audio tour was creepy and excellent. I loved it!

What we learnt today

You will always line up in Paris. When we visited the Eiffel tower a couple of days ago the lines were over 2 hours long. We asked the girl at information, what times there are less of a line at the tower, and she replied 'In January' (Parisian winter). We thought this was funny, but as the days have passed we have realised more and more how serious she really was. Everywhere has a massive line, you would think with the volume of people at Versailles or the tower that it would be quiet at other places, but it never is! Today was a key example of this as we visited the less popular catacombs (on a day that all other museums were free admission). We arrived 15 minutes before opening and joined a line of 150 people! You can't win!

Europeans travel with their pets. Since being at this camp-site we have seen one camper with her two Siamese cats in her camper van and another with two full grown Dalmatians with their own tent!