I had secretly wanted to go to the Catacombs the entire time I'd been in Paris-- I say secretly because I usually try to avoid all things scary because my imagination works way too well for my own good. Especially on dark nights where I have to walk to my car all by my little lonesome. EeeeK!
However, I decided to be brave and go! Unfortunately the girls from my group had already gone when I was in an interview and so I was on my own. Luckily, there was another group of teenagers going in at the same time as me so I just stuck with them...I think they were a bit uncomfortable by how closely I followed them. The catacombs are huge! I am kinda creeped out by the underground realm of Paris, if you think about how big of a distance the metro, sewers, and catacombs covers under the city... shiver me timbers! You could have a whole underground city--like the Court of Miracles in Victor Hugo's Notre Dame de Paris (well, the Court of Miracles is actually above ground in the novel--but in the Disney movie it's underground)! It didn't help that Katherine (my host lady, incase you've forgotten) told me that one of her cousins got angry at his parents and ran away with some of his friends and hid out in the catacombs for two weeks. She then cautioned me against going through the catacombs at night because of all the illicit activities that apparently go on there? I'm sure it's just urban legend, and that scary stories are promoted for tourism purposes, but, hey, you never know.
This is the entrance of the catacombs:
Translation:
"Stop, this is the empire of death"
It was incredibly eerie to walk through stacks of bones, I just had to keep reminding myself "it's just calcium phosphate, it's just calcium phosphate," but I was half expecting one of the skulls to turn its hole-y eye sockets at me!
I would have hated to be around when the bones were being carted out of the graveyards and across the city while priests chanted prayers over them...creeeepy!
There were all sorts of poems and quotes about death which were super melodramatic and kept reminding me that the catacombs are not only a resting place for thousands of people, but most importantly: a tourist attraction.
At the end of the tour they check your bags to see if you tried to steal any bones--eww, who would do that? "Hey, this is a fibula from a random skeleton in the catacombs" Gross. I then got sucked into the tourist shop and got conned into buying a tacky pin that bragged about surviving the catacombs (okay, I didn't actually get conned, I just went in to see what the gift shop had to offer, ended up talking to the cashier for half an hour and felt stupid spending so much time there and not getting anything) and was so happy to end my little excursion with a nice walk in the sunshine.
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