Chris sees' dead people and then we see the Eiffel Tower, by night (oh la la!)

Chris and I lined up for 10 minutes or so and said goodbye as he went in, saying we’d meet up across the street in an hour, and then I was alone in Paris. It felt kind of refreshing and nice. I now had only my bad French and self to rely on (well, lets be fair, I couldn’t really rely on my French to get me anything but some strange looks and laughter…) While I wandered about the city area looking at the little stores and being tempted to buy little items I don’t really need, but for the sake of the fact that they were on sale, did so, Chris walked beneath me looking at totally decomposed dead people.

We met an hour later where Chris said that he’d had a really good time and that it had been really interesting and that I should have come as it wasn’t that bad (yeah, right) He mentioned that these bodies had been placed down in the catacombs (old mine shafts) when the cemeteries became to full. That a group of people had been hired to stack the bones etc, and had become ‘creative’ and had then begun to make patterns and shapes with the bone parts, for instance, there is a love heart made out of a bunch of skulls. Charming. He also mentioned that there are some sick (very sick if you ask me) people out there, who, like to climb down into the catacombs, take drugs and then have sex on the bones… eeeeewwwwwww! Anyhow, I’m sure he mentioned many other interesting facts and stories to me but I sort of shut off after hearing that, sort of put me off but at the same time it was the only thing I could think of, really really disgusting. I then happily showed Chris my purchases from the morning where he rolled his eyes and informed me that I buy the oddest things, and now, as I look back on it, he’s right, I don’t really need a teeny tiny miniature ashtray, but still, it was only a Euro… I’m a girl I’m MEANT to buy nonsense items and spend money, right?

We then found a little food market where we brought some bread, dips and chicken and made our way to the Luxemburg gardens where we had a little picnic and spent hours just lying about under the trees and relaxing, it was really lovely. Feeling slightly more revived and ready to face the crowds once more we head off in the direction of the “Shakespeare and Co” bookshop. This is an English bookshop which is famous for the fact that all the people working there are writers who live upstairs of this business and for the fact that they have many authors coming in and doing readings of their work throughout the week. It was a very busy little bookshop and a little bit of a paradise for me, I could have looked at all the books, but, on time restriction was only able to spend half an hour looking through the stacks of books for a gem or two.

It was getting later now and we decided that tonight was the night. We were going to go and see the Eiffel Tower at night tonight. We arrived as the sun was beginning to lower itself and lay back on the grass waiting for darkness to descend and we weren’t disappointed. At 9pm the golden flood lights came on and it was just gorgeous. The whole area was flashing as many many tourists took happy snaps, and then, at 10pm the little twinkle lights came on and the whole area erupted into cheers and applause and then, all the French people there broke out in a song ending in cheers, it was a lovely moment and with the twinkle lights it was just breath taking gorgeous. We spent some time admiring this but decided that we’d leave when the twinkle lights went off (half an hour or so they last for) so, after this we head back to the hostel where we once more fell into bed exhausted but happy.

written by  Chris and Emily on July 31, 2009 from Paris, France
from the travel blog: Europe 2009
Send a Compliment

comment on this...