Paris Patrol
November 21 - November 22, 2022
During the middle of our trip to Switzerland, we took a quick two day trip to Paris. Jawz has always wanted to go to Paris and we had to make it happen. Like most of our trips, we packed a lot of activities into a very short time. We started out with going to Shakespeare and Co. (the bookstore) as this was a bucketlist thing she wanted to do. The line out front was pretty long, but after a quick wait, we got in. The shop was really cute with books jammed into every nook and cranny, along with a cafe and reading area upstairs. We ended up getting books as souvenirs for the entire family. From there, we went to the Louvre which was absolutely massive and we did not have nearly enough time in. Next stop after that was the Eiffel Tower, then another quick stop to the Arc de Triumph. That was everything on night one, but the next day, we went and explored the catacombs. We got lunch at a small cafe close to the exit of the catacombs before we caught the train back to Bern. I’ll get into more details about each excursion below, but just generally, we were not huge fans of Paris. To both Jawz and I, it felt a lot like New York City, just with the added downside of not knowing what anyone was saying because they spoke French. It was super busy everywhere, and the people had the same general coldness like the people in NYC, we just also couldn’t understand them. The architecture and history was super unique and interesting, but besides spending more time in the Louvre to see more of the art, we both said that if we were to go back to France, it would be to explore different areas besides Paris.
When we arrived in Paris, our first destination was Shakespeare and Co. On the way, we were super close to Notre Dame, so we stopped by and snapped a few pictures. Unfortunately, it was still under construction, so we couldn’t get too close. Then, we made it over to the bookstore, where we had to wait outside for about 10 minutes before we could go in. The whole store was maybe four or five small rooms with books from floor to ceiling and in every corner. Upstairs was a reading nook and café for people who wanted to stay and read. It was pretty cramped in there, even with the limited capacity they let in, but it was awesome to peruse the books and pick up some to add to our collection. From there, we briefly stopped at our Airbnb to drop off our bags. The Airbnb was a small place that we got access to through an indoor mall. When walking through the wall, we put a code into a door that led to a hallway where there was another codebox to get the key to our place. The place had a small kitchen and living room area, and you had to go downstairs (so under the mall) to get to the bedroom and bathroom. It was pretty nice and quiet though.
After we dropped our bags off at the Airbnb, we went to the Louvre to check out some ART. Our main goals were to see the Venus de Milo and the Mona Lisa, which we successfully completed! The Louvre was incomprehensibly large and stuffed full of so many relics, artifacts, paintings, and all of that. It was actually impossible for us to see everything in there, since we only had a few hours before it closed. We went through the ancient Egyptian section first, before we circled back through the Middle Eastern art section. We then hit the Renaissance era artwork before finishing up in the Greek art section. The Mona Lisa was actually smaller than I expected. There was a huge crowd around it and a queue line to get close. On the opposite wall was an absolutely huge painting that everyone pretty much ignored to see the Mona Lisa. I’m just going to dump all the photos here, there was just too much to see and I couldn’t possibly describe it all sufficiently.
After too few hours in the Louvre, Jawz and I went to get dinner. We stopped at a burger joint called Big Ferdinand and got some great beer and delicious sandwiches. It was a quick break, because we then went to the Eiffel Tower; of course, we had to. We spent some time walking around the base and getting more souvenirs. We were unable to go up to the very top, so we stayed at the base and watched the lightshow on the Tower that happened right at 7 o’clock. From there, we took the metro over to the Arc de Triomphe. We initially just wanted to walk around the base, but we bought tickets to something and then all of a sudden BOOM, we climbed to the top of the Arc. Jawz, being afraid of heights, heighted it, but I was having a blast. It was cool to see Paris stretch out from us in every direction. We actually timed it exquisitely, as we saw the 8 o’clock lightshow from the Tower while atop the Arc. We stayed up there for a while before we finally headed back to the Airbnb for some much needed rest.
The next day, we only had one activity planned. The morning was actually super eventful. We planned on taking our bags to the train station to be held there while we went about our day. However, the locker rental only took coin Euros, which we didn’t have. There were no ATMs in the train station and we only had Swedish Franks, so I had to walk a few blocks to a currency exchange shop to get change, while Jawz stayed at the station to watch our bags. On the way back, I was walking so fast that the money flew out of my pocket, but luckily a nice man pointed it out and I got back to Jawz pretty quickly. The first few photos are of the train station that I snapped quickly while walking to the currency exchange. Anyway, back to the trip: We went to the FREAKING Catacombs, which was probably one of the coolest things I’ve ever done. We did a guided tour of a small section of the Catacombs where an audio guide told you information about the formation of the catacombs and the overall situation of France at the time. After a bit of walking, we finally got to the BONE ZONE. We walked through a small passageway and then BOOM, there were walls and walls of bones, mainly made up of skulls and femurs. We learned that most of the rest of the bones were tossed behind the walls indiscriminately. It was a really somber but beautiful, the bones were so delicately placed and it was staggering to see how many remains were down there. We walked probably a few miles through the remains, it was very macabre. There were numerous plaques placed within the bone walls, some containing poems and sayings, while others stating where the bones came from and when. Each of the plaques was for a separate group of remains; as you can tell from the sheer amount of plaques alone, that there were bones of thousands of people in just the small section we walked through. There was also a well midway through the journey, and a large jar-like structure made of bones. There were numerous areas that were blocked or barred off so regular patrons couldn’t access them, which connected to the other miles of tunnels of the Catacombs. Lastly, the few photos towards the end of this group are a “skylight” to the surface, which shows how far underground we were.
