Day Seventy and Seventy-one: That darn strike

Well, we had grand plans to visit the Grand Palais today, which is a large historic site, exhibition hall and museum complex. They have a science center, and a variety of featured exhibitions which, according to the website, guaranteed to intrigue and interest. However, before we could do that, we had to quickly head over to the Montparnasse Train station to see if we could get our tickets home exchanged. See, last night we heard that the France strike over mandatory retirement age had now spilled over into Belgium. Which would have been just fine, except that in order to get back to Holland, the train would be traveling through Belgium. And since Belgium was on strike, the train would not be going back to Holland. After much deliberation, trying to book one more day at the hotel (it was fully booked), we decided that we could do nothing else but change our plans and leave a day early to avoid the strike.

So, we went downstairs to the train station and, much to Rob’s chagrin, stood in a line for about a half hour only to finally be told that they could do nothing for us and that we had to go to the Thalys station at Gare du Nord. Joy. We took the Metro to Gare du Nord, and stood in another line for another half hour, only to be told that they couldn’t exchange the ticket because it was purchased online, but that we could just get on the train tomorrow and explain the situation to the ticket collector on the day, presenting our current tickets. This was not quite the answer we had been hoping for, and it put a huge damper on our day. Most of the day wasted, we headed back home…

…and then remembered the Catacombs! The Catacombs are a famous underground ossuary that fills a renovated section of caverns and tunnels that are the remains of Paris' stone mines. The entrance to the Catacombs was fairly easy to find, thanks to my friend Dave’s tip on what to look for. Making it especially easy to find was the long queue of people assembled outside of a small, unimposing door with a sign reading Catacombes de Paris. The line took just over a half hour to work through, and Rob was less than happy after all the lines we had waited in previously today. However, I kept insisting that it would be worth the wait, and it definitely was, in my opinion.




The ticket booth regulates how many people enter the catacombs as there can only be a certain amount of people in the tunnels at any given time. When one person exits, another can enter. We bought our tickets, and headed to the narrow, stone spiral staircase of 130 steps. You could hear the faint trickle of water being channeled through the aqueduct, but not much else. The stairs acted as a very effective muffler, and it was difficult even to hear Rob as he descended only steps in front of me. We entered the passageways, finally, and after reading some educational plaques posted through the first few chambers, we were on our own, navigating through the sometimes low and dimly lit tunnels. It was moist, and unnaturally quiet. The rough, rocky walls and ceilings soon turned into neat, mortared stone. It only made me think of the reinforcement needed to keep the city of Paris from crashing down on these maze of tunnels. It had happened before in the late 18th century, and after several houses and roadways collapsed into previously unknown caverns below, Inspectors were made to assess and reinforce the tunnel system. The Catacombs were turned into a burial ground at the end of the 18th century. The cemetery of Innocents, a huge mass grave for commoners filled past overflowing, had been used for over five hundred years and had become the origin of infection as human rot leeched into the drinking water. Not cool. After multiple complaints, the Council of State finally pronounced the removal and the evacuation of the Cemetery of the Innocents on November 9, 1785. And where did they put all the bones? You guessed it, the Catacombs.

After winding around the passageways, we stumbled upon a sculpture that existed from a time even before this part of the mines became an ossuary; a model of France’s Port-Mahon fortress created by a former Quarry Inspector. Apparently these sculptures were created to signify landmarks on street level. It’s pretty impressive when you think of how difficult it would’ve been to create something like this by torchlight, with limited instruments. It’s pretty detailed, and they way they’ve lit it makes it really pop.

A few more passageways later, we found ourselves peering up at a stone portal, the ossuary entry, graced with the inscription "Arrête, c'est ici l'empire de la Mort" ('Stop, this is the empire of Death'). Beyond this menacing sign begin the halls and caverns with walls carefully arranged with human bones. The arrangements are beautifully organized, and there are artistic little details such as a heart-shaped outline in one wall formed with skulls embedded in surrounding tibias; another is a round room whose central pillar is also a carefully created 'keg' bone arrangement. You can't help but think about the shear numbers of people who had to have been dead to fill this place. There are also other monuments created in the years before catacomb renovations, such as a fountain baptised "La Samaritaine" because of later-added engravings. We noticed rusty gates blocking passages leading to other restricted parts of the catacombs – many of these are either un-renovated or were too un-navigable for regular tours.

In a cavern just before the exit stairway, we saw a really cool example of what the Quarry Inspection's work in the rest of Paris' underground requires: its roof is two 11-metre high domes of naturally degraded rock, reinforced by concrete. The dates painted into the highest point of “bell”, as they were called, tell you what year the work to the collapsing cavern ceiling was done, and whether it has degraded since. A pretty good system, unless the date crumbles off!

We hiked up the 83 steps to street level feeling happy to be alive… and decided to have a nice picnic style dinner back in our hotel room. We bought some bottles of wine, a baguette, Brie and Port Salut cheese, smoked salmon, and some salads. Quite yummy.

The next morning, Rob’s friend Celine came into Paris to hang out with us on our last day. She was one of the people in Rob’s dorms when he was in France on exchange during his undergrad. We walked down the Champs Elysées together, stopping in car stores with Rob. I wasn’t entirely interested in touristy shopping, but it was cool to walk down this wide boulevard. At the bottom of the Place Charles de Gaulle, we saw the Arc de Triomphe, The Luxor Obelisk (originally located at the entrance to the Luxor Temple, in Egypt), and the Fountain of River Commerce and Navigation. The Arc de Triomphe is so colossal that three weeks after the Paris victory parade in 1919, marking the end of hostilities in World War I, Charles Godefroy flew his Nieuport biplane through it, with the event captured on newsreel! The 3,300-year-old Luxor Obelisk once marked the entrance to the Luxor Temple. Muhammad Ali Pasha offered the two obelisks standing at the entrance of Luxor Temple to France in 1829. King Louis-Philippe had it placed in the center of Place de la Concorde on October 25, 1836, where a guillotine used to stand during the Revolution. However, the other obelisk was too heavy to move with the technology of that time, and in the 1990s, President Mitterrand officially gave the second obelisk back to the Egyptians (even though it was in Egypt the whole time). That’s a lot of history in one city square, I tell you.





We ended up having lunch and heading directly to Gare du Nord, so that we could be sure that we got on the train. It was very full, but we ended up scoring seats and made it home just fine, thank goodness!