Paris - Friday, July 15, 2016

Woke up to my phone buzzing at 4:30am - the wi-fi finally came back on!  The bad news was that we had multiple missed phone calls and messages checking to see if we were ok because of the terror attack in Nice the night before.  We had gone to bed after the fireworks without even turning on the TV (we didn't really watch TV except for the soccer games - they spoke too fast in French for us to catch much anyway).  We returned massages and emails, making sure everyone knew we were nowhere near Nice and then started off our last full day in Paris with the hop on-hop off bus tour.  The open-top double decker bus makes a loop around the main tourist attraction in center city so we got another look at the Arc de Triomphe, the Louvre, the Opera Garnier, Champs Elysees, and the Place de la Concorde before hopping off at Notre Dame.  Dad wanted to see the back side of Notre Dame plus Ile de St. Louis, the smaller island next to Ile de la Cite, so we parted ways again and Margo and I headed for the Catacombs.  It was probably a half hour walk through the Latin Quarter and Saint Germaine neighborhoods to get to the entrance of the tour, so we stopped for a croissant and some coffee and tried to read the French newspaper to see what happened in Nice.  When we got to the Catacombs entrance, we knew we were in for a wait - the line was all the way around the block!  Margo stayed in line while I went in search of a public restroom and a place to buy stamps and mail a few postcards.  When I got back, she had moved further than I thought she would so we were hopeful that the wait wouldn't be too bad.  But then a few group tours showed up and they were let in first, and some people had timed tickets they bought on the internet, so the line stagnated for an hour or so.  Margo's explorations to the front of the line let us know that there are only 200 people allowed in the Catacombs at any one time, so they could only let people in as others exited a mile away.  This was, by far, the longest we had had to wait for anything on the trip, but we finally got in and got to see what it was all about.  According to the audio tour, much of the passageways in the Catacombs date back to the building of much of Paris - the stone was quarried from underground in blocks in order to construct many of the buildings.  The quarried areas didn't have much use after that until the public health crisis with the sewers and the growing population of the city forced a decision to dig up all of the cemeteries and move the bones to be stored in the old quarry tunnels.  It is estimated that over 6 million sets of bones are held in the Catacombs passageways.  Each section is marked with the cemetery from which the bones were relocated, and they are all stacked very neatly - mostly arm and leg bones and skulls were visible - with some placed in designs, like a heart shape or an X made of skulls.  The walk through the passageways was about a mile long, and by the time we emerged from the tunnels and back into the daylight, we were ready to head home for dinner.  We had eaten all of our meals in Paris at cafes and bistros, but my Dad and stepmom wanted to take us out to a restaurant to thank us for helping navigate the city and plan out where we went each day.  They chose a place called Le Clos des Gourmets, on Avenue Rapp near the Eiffel Tower and Champ de Mars.  They had a nice fixed price 3 course menu, a starter, entree, and dessert, and we all split a bottle of Chardonnay.  I had fresh sardine filets marinated in lime juice, a ricotta and courgette (zucchini) lasagne, and a fresh melon gazpacho.  All of it was wonderful!  Margo chose the Caesar salad, pan roasted chicken and potatoes, and Camembert and bread for dessert.  Dad and Ellen both had the Caesar salad and cod with chorizo on top of cuttlefish ink risotto, with strawberry shortcake and poached peach desserts.  What a wonderful way to end such a fantastic vacation!  In the morning, we will all be leaving Paris, Margo and I for our flights home, first from Charles de Gaulle to Reykjavik and then on to Dulles, and Dad and Ellen will take the train to Avignon for 2 days before flying from Marseille to Amsterdam to Minneapolis to Denver.