Day Two- The Catacombs and Sacre Couer

Day two and we had an actual reservation for a tourist site, just like regular people!  No, I wasn't able to get us up the Eiffel Tower (still on my bucket list!) but we did have tickets to see the catacombs.  But first, a quest to find a patisserie.  I had recently started watching The Great British Bake Off and I wanted to try some real French patisserie while we were in Paris.  I don't remember the name of the place we stopped, but it was scrummy! Definitely worth the calories!

Then we went to the catacombs, in which I somehow took 0 pictures.  Or maybe you weren't allowed to take pictures?  Either way I have no pictures of bones to show you.  If you are unfamiliar with the Paris catacombs (which I wasn't before this tour), they are this vast network of underground tunnels that are full of bones.  The bones are from cemeteries around Paris that have been moved to the tunnels over the centuries for various reasons.  

A neat piece of history, a long, long time ago, Paris was a backwater on a river in Gaul while Rome was the center of the world.  Rome needed limestone for all its awesome bath houses and acropolises (acropoli? I digress) so they imported it from mines on the Seine river.  Eventually Paris was built onto of those old mines.  

By the mid 1700's, Paris's cemeteries were very crowded and they were moving old bones to put new bodies in.  People back then believed that something called miasma (vapors or mist caused from decomposing things) could cause illness and plague.  So they decided to move all the old bones into the old mine shafts for sanitation.  Every night for months they carted bones down into the catacombs.  

Now, I'm no scientist, but if you did believe that miasma caused illness, why would you cart dead bodies through the city? Wouldn't that get miasma everywhere? Anyway, germ theory was developed in the late 1800's, putting an end to this belief.  And now you can visit the catacombs and see all the bones artfully arranged.  Oh, and it isn't just regular old people that are in the catacombs.  At one point, the audio tour said the bones of Robespierre were somewhere in the pile on our left.  What? One day you are inciting the French Revolution and then you are just in a pile somewhere on the left? 

After the catacombs we had one of our favorite French meals.  Roasted chicken and potatoes from the grocery store.  It is so good!  Since it was too warm to eat it in a park, which we normally do, we ate it back at the hotel.

Feeling refreshed, Rob asked what we should do next.  Well... we've never been to Montmartre or seen Sacre Coeur... Done! And it was amazing!  

La Basilique du Sacre Jouer de Montmartre et moi

The city behind us

This picture should be captioned "we don't even know how precious this moment was."

People often look at me like I've grown another head when I talk about the traveling we do with our kids.  But yes, they really do love to travel and see new cities.  You just have to have balance.  Start the morning off with a bunch of bones (awesome), then take them to a super cool Basilica (but let them chase pigeons as you climb the steps up), then find a park and let them run free for a bit.  Bonus if they can ride the carousel with you!

I think on the day he gets married, I will still think of this moment of silliness and joy we had.

Once the park was thoroughly enjoyed, we were off to dinner at a cafe.

Yum!

And that was it!  The next day we boarded a plane with Rob as our pilot and he flew us back to Cincinnati.  He had a day at home and then flew back to Paris, then home.  And then he didn't fly again for a year.  Although word of the virus spreading was all around us, we had no idea that this would be our last trip, or Rob's last trip for such a long time.  I am so very, very glad that I did all the work to get us on this trip.  And I am so grateful that Rob is flying again, even if it is a different plane and only in the US.  Here's hoping we can see our favorite city again soon.

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