Wednesday was a day filled of death? We started at the Catacombs, which was a real eye opener about life. The catacombs started out as a quarry for limestone, and then as the cemeteries in Paris filled up, they ran out of room for the bodies. So a logical response? Let’s take the bodies out and stack the bones in the quarry! 6 million people were removed from their first resting spot and were taken apart and stacked in the catacombs. Along the way they had anecdotal sayings about life and death. The overall affect: you can do all these different things during your lifetime, but in the end you’re going to be a bunch of bones. Yep, I guess I better leave a good legend or story behind to live on?
Which leads me to the Pantheon. It’s an old cathedral in the Latin Quarter and it holds the remains of many famous people that have made contributions to the world, or honored France. Most notably (to me at least) were Marie and Pierre Curie, Voltaire, Louis Braille, Jean Rousseau and Victor Hugo. One of the coolest things about the Pantheon is that it still has many empty crypts leaving space for people to be honored and entombed here in the future. It’s history in progress.
After the Pantheon, Becky, Daren and I had planned to go eat our lunches in the Tuileries Garden, but along the way to the metro stop, found a cute little English pub with a good menu and really good prices, so of course we stopped to grab a bite. I got some garlicky chicken and the others went for traditional fish and chips, complete with mushy peas (and no cole slaw… reality check that fish and chips are not only from New England and that they originated in England). Quite delicious. Later that afternoon we met up with the group at Gare St. Lazare to return home… ehhh to Rouen. After weeks of traveling and spending each night in a different place, it’s very nice and homey to have a familiar place to return to. Gotta love this town.
Encore une fois,
Bisous!
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