Our first stop was the Catacombs. The Catacombs were originally a stone mine beneath the city that was eventually closed due to the vast cave-ins it was causing around Paris. The city eventually decided to use it as a place to store bodies after the cemeteries around Paris began running out of space (a problem that lead to diseased water and seepage of bodily fluids from the mass graves into the basements of adjacent homes). The bodies were originally just tossed down shafts into the catacombs. Eventually a man decided to spend some time and organize the bones into walls (made of femurs and skulls) and other strange sculptures. It must take a pretty disturbed person to want to volunteer to do something like this.
After convincing the clerk we were students (getting half off the admission price) and walking down a dizzying spiral staircase and lengthy stone corridor we got to the good stuff...
The long corridor
Creepy off shoots from the main walk through the Catacombs
A sculpture made by a mine worker of the Palace he could see from his prison cell before he was released.
I touched it...
There were weird shrines throughout
A cave in area.
Once we were out of the macabre maze we grabbed some crepes (apparently tons of dead bodies make Amy and I hungry) and headed over to the Notre Dame.
No hunchbacks here.
Our final stop was a the Eiffel tower. We were so exhausted from the endless walk over there that we just snapped a quick pic and hopped on the metra back to our hotel.
And that's that! The end to our 3 month European adventure. The flight back to Chicago was surprisingly enjoyable, save for watching the movie Contagion, and we were glad to be back state side. Now, time for the Holidays!
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