Wednesday morning was our fifth day in Paris and it was time to check out of our hotel. We packed up our stuff and I tried to find Riaz’ number, so I asked the lobby and they pointed me to a little closet with a computer in it! Joy! First things first, I looked up his number. Then I checked my Facebook and mail (of course). I guess I lost track of time and Marylynn came down looking for me. Could you imagine that? She checked her sister Sarah’s blog only to find out that she had had her baby 5 days prior!! Aw man! Well, with this good news, the lady at the front desk didn’t charge us for the internet usage! Imagine that! And they say the French are rude…

We took our bags down to the train station and headed over to St. Quentin – where Riaz lives. It wasn’t far, only two stops down and it’s where I spent 6 months as a missionary in 1998. It was my favorite area. Riaz’ wife, Bérengère met us at the station and we headed up to their apartment to drop our bags off before heading off to Paris.

But first things first, we had to swing by the mega grocery store, Carrefour, for some food for the day.

If anyone were to ask me why exactly I’m so obessed with France, this would be a good place to start. We grabbed some breakfast and lunch snacks to go and headed on down to the train station to head in to Paris.

I’m a happy camper when I’m in France, eating a real Pain au Chocolat (Americans call it a “chocolate croissant”) and drinking Yop. Being in St. Quentin doesn’t hurt one bit either.

It was around this time I realized that I should have been documenting everything I ate on the trip. So, this is Yop, a yogurt drink made by Yoplait that is unavailable in the states. It’s very filling and very delicious. It comes in all sorts of flavors, this being Chocolate of course. I’m partial to Peach, Strawberry or “Energie” which is a combination of fruits. Freaking great stuff I tell ya.

After our late start, we headed directly to The Catacombs. In the Southern side of Paris, lies a little tiny entrance to one of the coolest things in the whole city – The Catacombs. Starting in the early 1700, the king sent out an order to some monks to exhume certain cemeteries that were making people in the surrounding neighborhoods sick. I believe this was also a space issue as well. These bodies of old bones were put deep down into a defunct underground quarry. Out of respect (and brilliant space-saving techniques), the monks positioned the bones just so that the femurs made walls to hold back piles of bones. Then the strategically placed skulls to decorate these femur-walls. Then came the French revolution and much more bones were added. Years passed and more and more cemeteries were exhumed until the bones of hundreds of thousands of people were placed in this underground tunnel. In the mid-1800s it was opened up to the public as a macabre spectacle. Today it remains my favorite thing to see in all of Paris.

I’m a-creepin and I’m a-crawlin! Betta watch yo’ back, fool!

Maylynn is so excited! We had to walk down a really long tunnel before we could get to the good stuff.

This was a replica of the castle / building that used to stand here. We were somewhere down near the foundation. It kinda reminds me of Castle Greyskull.

“STOP! THIS IS THE EMPIRE OF THE DEAD!”
Here we go! This is entrance to the bony part.

Marylynn loves death because she is so gothic. Apparently the monks got bored or something and they arranged the skulls into fun shapes and designs.

They also had crosses and even built a little chapel with an altar and everything. creepy.

Since I had last visited the Catacombes in ‘99, they had outlawed flash photography. Why? I don’t know. So even with low-light settings, we had a very hard time getting anything to show up. Here’s me standing next to a light. We tried to make do with what we had.

Marylynn getting cozy with the bones. She was the happiest here than anywhere else on whole trip.

Finn acting scared of the femurs. Seriously cool if you ask me.

After the catacombs, we were in a rather morbid mood, so we headed over to the famous graveyard, Père Lachaise where the Parisian rich and famous go to die. There are a lot of dead artists, writers, musicians and such found there. Oscar Wilde, Chopin, Edith Piaf and many, many more are buried there

Marylynn had read the story of Abélard et Héloïse in our Paris guidebook and really really wanted to find their grave. Apparently they were lovers who were tragically separated during the middle-ages only because they were uncle and niece. Is that really so wrong? hehehh… JOKE. Anyhow, We looked forever to find their grave and stumbled upon it. It was pretty massive and was being restored. I got a picture of it through the scaffolding, though. Not bad.

Then right around the corner was the famous grave of The Lizard King himself, Mr. Jim Morrison. They had cleaned up the surrounding area considerably. The last time I was there, all of the surrounding graves were covered with graffiti from fans of the Doors. Plus there was a security guard on duty watching us.

We were about done with Pere Lachaise (and walking – sheesh!!) at this point so we decided to head back over to Notre Dame to see if we could get in this time…

I got this one for my buddy Octavio, who is really into graffiti. We were walking back to the metro when I saw this lovely scene. I was surprised to see this guy tagging up this van in broad daylight. Maybe it was his own van…? Well, if so, good for him!

We went first to the Sainte Chapelle, which is a crazy ornate cathedral built to house (suposedly) the crown of thorns. You can see the spire there to the left. In the center is a big government building which I forgot what it was exactly. But anyhow, so we get to the Sainte Chapelle only to find out that it closed 15 minutes earlier. Dang it! So we strolled on over to the Notre Dame cathedral just around the corner. We sat down and had some baguettes and Boursin before going inside. (see photo at top of post)

We actually got in this time! (score!). They were in the middle of having mass, and I must admit I felt rather awkward being a tourist during their church service, but heck, I there was a whole stream of folks wandering around.

I was going to delete this bad photo and then I noticed this guy’s epic curly dread mullet!! How awesome / terrible is that? It had to be documented for future generations.

I think this one turned out really good.

After we were done at Notre Dame, we headed back to St. Quentin and met up with Riaz and Bérengère and we all went together to visit Denise Beaudegal, a lovely older church member who I knew from my mission. She wanted to have us over for an aperatif (pringles, pretzels and juice). We had a really nice visit. She told us her memories of World War 2 and how the noise of the planes dropping bombs would scare her. So cool. We even talked about Germans and how she holds no ill will towards them, because they were just following orders. Very true… but I don’t think she saw the German television program I saw the night before featuring yodelers, polka bands and a decrepit Larry Hagman still in a cowboy hat reliving his JR Ewing after all these years waving to the audience. Seriously crazy.

After our visit to Sister Beaudegal, we went out to eat at a very authentic Italian restaurant and each had our own awesome pizza. I had full sausages, ham, unpitted olives, egg and some other stuff on mine. It was really good actually. We had a great night of catching up and talking to the Dobys.

When we got back to their place, they gave us ice cream (French Ice Cream RULES!!!) and we watched a TV show called “H” which was sort of like if Scrubs were filmed in front of a live studio audience. Pretty funny. We were finally able to call our kids! We missed them so much and they seemed to be doing really well at John and Jaime’s house. Cricket was excited and wanted to play a new game with us that she made up. Buster was just happy to say hi.

So with that, we went to bed. We had our last full day ahead of us. Riaz wanted to take us to Normandy and show us the real France… More on that in tomorrow’s post!!

Read DAY SIX
Go back and read DAY FOUR

This entry was posted on Friday, October 3rd, 2008 at 10:32 pm and is filed under Family, Francophilia, Marylynn, Photos, Tyler, Vacation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.