Paris (October 14-17)

I arrived in Paris in the afternoon (of the day after I left Rome--long tiny-Italian-train-station kind of night) and went on a night tour of the Montmartre district, which was really good and involved a lot of scandalous stories about the Moulin Rouge and about various artists you may have heard of, which are my favorite kinds of stories. 

The literal heart of Jesus (Sacre Coeur)

The next morning, I went to the catacombs, which is this gigantic collection of bones from several cemeteries in Paris, reinterred in some old mining tunnels a couple hundred years ago. For some reason, I wasn't expecting this to be that popular a tourist destination (compared to everything else there is to do in Paris, not to say that I don't think huge collections of bones are cool; obviously I do), but I arrived about an hour after it opened and found a line around the block. It took me almost two hours to get in, easily the longest line I've stood in on this trip, but at least I had a book to read (thanks, Kindle app!). And at least the catacombs were really neat.

Turns out the reason the line was so long is that they're only allowed to let a certain number of people inside at a time, and people get pretty spread out, so sometimes I was in these long stretches of tunnel with no one to be seen anywhere, like I was the only one in (under) the world. And, yeah, they've installed lights, but other than that, there aren't many amenities down there--just low ceilings, rough stone walls, gravel underfoot, and rows of skulls and stacked bones from floor to ceiling. Every once in a while water drips down, you can hear it splashing off to the side, and the crunch of gravel starts to feel like you're walking on the bones themselves. And let's not even discuss the gaps at the top of the bone stacks where something could totally hide. Definitely a creepy place. But I don't mean to be needlessly macabre or disrespect the thousands of dead that thousands of people walk past every day. If you really start thinking about it, it's overwhelming--and maybe scary in a different way--to find yourself surrounded by that. 

After the catacombs, I did my customary wandering, and was pleased with my map skills again. Paris is the only place of all the places I've been/am going that I've been to before, four years ago during my study abroad, but I wanted to come back because I felt like there were still so many things I wanted to do. And there is a lot to do. But I was pretty tired, so post-wander (which included an excellent used bookstore, always a plus), I headed back, ate a kebab, and went to sleep.

The next day I got up early and went to Versailles, one of the places I didn't have time to go before, with two girls from my hostel I'd discovered the night before had identical going-to-Versailles plans. Here, I was worried about long lines, but there weren't really any at all, though it was crowded inside the palace. Also unbelievably beautiful. Just ... the detail, the opulence, the brocade, the gold. It's so pretty. I got perhaps more excited than I care to admit looking at the royal bedchambers and the Hall of Mirrors, and I read enough novelizations of the life of Marie Antoinette in my youth that it was easy to imagine this place in another time, with the people I'd read about in it. 

After the palace itself, we ventured outside to the gardens, which of course is when it started raining. It got freezing and miserable pretty quick, but we pressed on through the topiary and reached Marie Antoinette's hamlet, which is so cute and maybe my favorite part of the whole thing. 

That and the crazy gold doors. 

Back in Paris, I went with one of my traveling companions to Notre Dame. I've been in Notre Dame before, and I've certainly been in plenty of churches/cathedrals on this trip--and sometimes I am distinctly unmoved by them, but walking into Notre Dame you can't help but feel something. There's a weight to this place, and something beautiful, and the arches and the spires and ... yeah. That. 

Here are some gargoyles!

Then I took myself out for a proper French dinner (onion soup, cordon bleu, and chocolate mousse), and it should have been another early night for me, but then I accidentally went clubbing with a mixed group of Brazilians, Australians, and Irishwomen, because, you know, as discussed previously, priorities. 

It was tough getting up the next morning, but I wanted to see the Louvre (another thing I missed last time, though not for lack of trying--museum workers were on strike last time I was in Paris) before catching the afternoon train to Belgium. Again I was surprised by the total lack of line (though I did get there only a few minutes after it opened). It only took me about twenty minutes to get from outside to a hall of sculptures, and half of that was me wandering around like a lost lamb looking for the Mona Lisa and then going the complete opposite direction anyway). And--maybe because the Louvre is so massive--it didn't actually seem incredibly crowded, except of course when I actually did make it to the Mona Lisa, which was, you know, nice, and now I guess I can say I've actually seen it, but I feel like I've seen so many recreations of it that it didn't feel all that special

Heyyyy, Mona Lisa.

My favorite things in the museum were the Dutch masters, as per usue, and all the Egyptian stuff that Napoleon looted, of which there was a lot. I also kind of appreciate that only a few signs/placards have English translations and most are just in French. Sometimes in museums I get so obsessive about reading about the art that I forget to actually look at it (and the not-catering-to-tourists pleases me as well), though I'm sure that this led to me missing at least one important work because I wasn't paying attention to its title/artist. 

When I was too tired to appreciate the art anymore, I headed out and got a crepe, then settled down by the fountain in the Tuileries to eat it, and I had this moment--one of several I've had on this trip--where I thought, Here I am, eating a crepe in the Tuileries, and it's beautiful out, and I'm in Paris, and isnt' life awesome? Yeah it is.