When I woke up on Friday morning, my knee felt much better (although it still hurt). After breakfast, Miles and I decided to go see Sainte-Chapelle, a 13th century Gothic cathedral near Notre Dame. It is known primarily for its stained glass, and understandably so. There was so much! I don’t know how the building could have possibly remained structurally sound with so many massive windows. The stained glass was really beautiful, although it would definitely be better on a clear day. On our way back from the church, we stopped in a comic store (of which there are 1000s in Paris) and admired the numerous action figures and the wide variety of comics. We somehow both made it out without buying anything and returned to the hotel.
The non-architecture Le Corbusier students were given all of Friday free, so I took a few minutes to determine what I wanted to do with my day. I ate lunch with Jamie, Brooke, and the ‘Gay Quad’ (Coleman, Ben, McArthur, and John). After lunch, they decided they wanted to go to Sainte-Chapelle and the aquarium. I wanted to see the Catacombs and Pere Lachaise, so I elected to venture off on my own. We agreed to meet up at the Louvre at 5pm so we could see the things that we missed on our first visit.
I parted ways with Jamie, Brooke, and the Quad at the Saint-Michel station and took the Metro to Denfert-Rochereau. By this point, I had completely mastered the Paris Metro, which is a lot easier than people make it out to be. Maybe it’s because I got used to using the T in Boston, but I don’t know…it’s really not all that complicated. Anyway, I walked around Place Denfert-Rochereau for a bit, admired the giant lion statue, and finally got in line for the Catacombs. They only let about 20 people in at a time, so I had to wait for a little while, but it wasn’t bad. I found myself in line with a French family with British father, an Australian couple, a group of young to middle-aged Americans, and a couple of French people. I did my best to inconspicuously try to follow the conversations of the French people to pass the time.
When they allowed us inside, the first stop was a small museum-type area. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the information plaques were in English as well as French, which is actually more uncommon than you would think. I was amused to hear the British father (perhaps a stepfather?) teaching his French family to read the English plaques. Anyway, I learned from the museum area that the Catacombs were actually old quarries. In the 18th century, the cemeteries in Paris were so full of bodies that the people living near them were getting diseases, mainly bubonic plague and tuberculosis. After all the regulations imposed on the cemeteries were ignored, the city came up with a new solution. They would move bodies from the worst of the cemeteries into the old quarries under Denfert-Rochereau. When all was said and done, over 6 million bodies were moved underground. The part with the bodies, also known as an ossuary, actually only occupies a small part of the massive system of underground tunnels, quarries, and caverns underneath the city of Paris.
After the museum area, I descended a very narrow, long spiral staircase that took me 100 meters or so underground and into the quarries. For me, the quarry area that hadn’t been turned into an ossuary was the most claustrophobic part of the visit. It was quite dark, with very low ceilings and cramped walls. Eerily, there was a black line drawn on the ceiling that went all the way down. I later learned that the quarry workers drew this line so they wouldn’t get lost in the maze beneath Paris. When the passage finally opened up, there were little carved castles in the cavern, which some quarry workers built in honor of friends who had died in a nearby collapse. Beyond these strange little monuments, there was a deep underground well.
After the well, the passages started to show more structural features, such as arches. Finally, I reached the entrance to the ossuary, over which was carved “Arretez. C’est ici l’Empire de la Mort” which means “Stop. This is the Empire of the Dead”. By this point, I had hung back pretty far from the group in order to take photos and experience this strange place in solitude. When I entered the ossuary, I was immediately surrounded by neatly organized stacks of skulls and what appeared to be femurs. The stacks continued throughout the ossuary, sometimes including other bones, sometimes stacked to form shapes. One that particularly stands out in my mind was a wall where the skulls were stacked to form a heart.
Apart from the organization of the bones, the thing that struck me most about the experience was reading the carvings in the walls that had been left by the churches that had moved their cemeteries into this ‘Empire of the Dead’. They were phrases that were religious of course, but they were words of comfort for the dead that seemed almost apologetic, as though these people felt guilty for moving the bodies into this anonymous mass grave. Occassionally, there would be a stone sarcophagous, which I assumed was for clergymen or important people who had been buried in the cemeteries…people whose bodies the churches would not throw in with the millions of nameless people by whom I was surrounded. I learned during my visit that the appearance of organization was somewhat deceptive. The bones that were visible were actually stacked in this way to form walls that hid behind them piles of bodies that were simply thrown into the former quarry. At one point, I just had to stop and look around, trying to absorb the enormity of what I was seeing. It was one of the most surreal experiences of my life.
After huffing and puffing my way back out of the Catacombs up yet another steep, narrow spiral staircase, I realized that the exit was somewhere completely different than the entrance and I had no idea where I was. Fun. Using skills learned from my Grandad along with some instinct, I headed north, and pretty soon, the area started to look familiar again. Just to be sure, I asked for directions to the nearest Metro in a pharmacy, and sure enough, I was just three blocks from the Denfert-Rochereau station. I was happy to see that I had almost three hours to explore my next destination, Pere Lachaise. Little did I know, it wouldn’t be nearly enough.
I took the Metro to the Pere Lachaise stop and decided to stop in a cafe for a beer and a crepe. After my little snack, with about 2 hours until I was to meet everyone at the Louvre, I crossed the street to Pere Lachaise, the largest cemetery inside Paris’ city limits, and the final resting place of famous figures such as Jim Morrison. There were people selling maps outside the cemetery, which I thought was a scam until I went inside and realized just how big the cemetery really is. According to Wikipedia, it’s 118.6 acres, and the tombs are packed in there like sardines. There are over 300,000 bodies buried in the cemetery.
I had in mind 3 people I wanted to visit: Oscar Wilde, Edith Piaf, and Frederic Chopin. I quickly realized that A) I would need to buy a map to do this and B) It was going to take all the time I had just to find these three tombs. So, I purchased my map and made my way up to Oscar Wilde’s grave, which was all the way in the back. Along the way, I stopped by Eugene Delacroix’s (the artist I mentioned in my previous post) grave. Visually, this tomb was very interesting. It was all black with gold lettering, which seemed appropriate considering how dark his paintings tended to be. There were two fresh yellow roses lain over one corner of the tomb, which stood out brightly against the black stone.
Next, I finally made it to Oscar Wilde’s tomb. Just as legend says, it is covered in lipstick kisses, and visitors had left many flowers and other various gifts for the late author. I spent quite awhile with Oscar (probably longer than I should have), and it actually helped a lot with the occassional periods of the blues I’ve had since coming here. After lingering as long as I dared, I moved on to Edith Piaf. It was quite a lovely tomb, with a lot of flowers and prayers left for the chanteuse. I spent a few minutes here, but moved on quickly because a large crowd of people was coming toward it.
Realizing I was running out of time, I hurried down to Frederic Chopin’s tomb, which was mobbed by Asian tourists. It was also right alongside the path, making it inconvenient to stop there for long. This tomb, however, was as beautiful as you might expect, and covered in fresh flowers. After taking a few photos, it was time to go and I hurried back to the Metro stop.
My mastery of the Metro allowed me to make it to the Louvre with about 5 minutes to spare, but everyone else was already there. It was then that Jamie told me we were supposed to meet Dalton at the hotel at 6:30 to go to a cruise dinner on the Seine. At 50 Euros a head, I was a little skeptical, especially considering the medieval dinner from Wednesday night. Nevertheless, this was the expensive dinner I had planned for and was excited to go to, so we only had about an hour to spend in the Louvre. We used the time to return to French and Northern European paintings, which we liked much better than the Italian ones. Here, we saw masters such as Rubens, Renoir, and Wacteau. I wished we could have spent more time with them, but we had to hurry back to the hotel and get ready for our dinner.
Jamie and I met up with Dalton, Anna, Emily, Claire, Corey, and Alex in the lobby. From there, we took the Metro to a stop near the Eiffel Tower and walked down to the river where the boat was supposed to be docked. We searched up and down the river, but were unable to find the boat until we saw it pull in on the other bank. We rushed across a bridge and to the boat, only to discover we weren’t likely to get in without a reservation. Anna, with her excellent French and people skills, did her best schmoozing with the captain, but the best we could do was two tables of four. Since part of the group was unwilling to do this, we gave up and decided to eat elsewhere, but not before making reservations for the next night.
Anna, Corey, and Alex decided to go up the Eiffel Tower and get dinner in the area, while the rest of us elected to eat in the vicinity of the hotel and hit some of the nearby clubs. We took the Metro back and looked around for awhile before finally deciding on a relatively inexpensive Italian restaurant. Each of us had a glass of champagne at the restaurant, and we spent awhile there eating our dinners drinking cheap (but good) wine. Finally, we left and headed for Cafe Georges (Cocktails and Dreams), which had caught our eye the night before because all of the servers wore gold masks. We drank a lot at Cafe Georges, partially motivated by the fact that drinks came with sparklers and shots were lit on fire. We also had a lot of fun dancing, and Dalton and I in particular had a good time imitating the strange European dancing. They even played some Lady Gaga, to our delight. After awhile, though, it seemed like they were only going to play reggaetone (electronic reggae, very popular in France), so we finally left. From there we stopped briefly in a Latino club, then went to a bar near Notre Dame. We wanted to play more, but it seemed everything was closing, so we ended up back at the hotel. It was a very fun night, especially compared with the previous night, and I went to bed happy, in spite of the fact that once again, I was in for a night of less than 4 hours of sleep.
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