The next day was the day (dramatic pause) – of death!
We got off to a fairly late start, and decided to try to negotiate the Metro and visit the grave of Oscar Wilde (and various other well-known figures) at the Cimetiere du Pere Lachaise. The Metro turned out to be fairly straightforward, but unfortunately, it started raining; and even more unfortunately, I didn’t have my umbrella with me. Buying an umbrella wasn’t too hard, but wandering around outside in the rain didn’t appeal, so we decided to try the Catacombs.
We found it easily enough, and the rain had mostly cleared, but there was a line that stretched around a nearby park. But we thought, what the hell, and joined the line.
It took two hours.
(There was a note on the notice by the entrance that there was sometimes a “slight delay” to entrance, since there’s a maximum number of people who can enter at a time. “Slight”. Bah.)
The Catacombs themselves were interesting – they were originally stone quarries outside Paris, that eventually became stone quarries under Paris as Paris grew. But time and rain meant that parts of Paris ended up coming down sink-holes into these abandoned quarries, and a commission was set up to stop them from swallowing more of the city than was absolutely necessary. These former quarries were then used to solve a different problem – there were too many cemeteries, and not enough space, so the bones of dead Parisians were transported with due ceremony across the city… where they were dumped in piles in these underground spaces. Someone then decided to rearrange the bones into a more aesthetically pleasing form, piling up femurs, scapula and skulls into patterned walls; thematically appropriate inscriptions were added, and pretty soon you had something that was irresistible to the burgeoning Romantic movement.
Seeing a skull reminds you of your mortality. Seeing hundreds of skulls reduces them to objects, bits of bone like any other bits of things. Stacking things into a pattern produces art.
I’m glad I went, but I’m not sure I’ll go again.
It took a little under an hour to get to the surface, and then it was sunny, so we decided to return to Cimetiere du Pere Lachaise. We didn’t have too much time, but it is a really beautiful cemetery; the tributes to the war dead, especially the dead of the concentration camps, managed to be far more creepy and melancholy than metres and metres of bones and skulls were. Still, I would happily return there; ideally, with some sort of guide to tell me about all the normal people who have used it as their final resting place.
The next day we were meant to meet someone at the Musee d’Orsay, so we were there before opening time. The person that we were meant to meet never showed (they had tried to shift the meeting time), but it meant that we were able to join the queue nice and early, which got us in before the main rush. The museum isn’t incomprehensibly huge like the Louvre or the British Museum, which means that you feel like you can actually get a feel for it in a few hours, and you might be able to do a proper look in a day). I was very happy that C & I splashed out on audio-guides, since I think I got a lot more out of it, and looked more carefully at some things that deserved a careful look.
There are tonnes of really famous pieces, including a lot of van Gogh – there’s his self-portrait, and the portrait of his doctor, and the chapel that will be familiar to anyone who’s seen the appropriate Dr Who episode. But there’s also a lot of interesting sculptures, like The Gladiators, where a sculptor cast two gladiators in bronze, and then the son cast a stand for the original sculpture to stand on, and his father working on the piece – was that vandalism, or adding to the artwork?
There was also a fair amount of Art Nouveau, including a complete Art Nouveau-style room; Margie has declared that this will be the style her house is done in when she is Queen of the World. And there were displays of how they got to Art Nouveau, with furniture and fireplaces and… well, and a whole lot of stuff. We extended our stay for a couple of hours, and could still have happily looked around some more (though our feet were protesting by this time).
We met up with Margie and Meredith, grabbed some food, and walked along to the Eiffel Tower. We got some pictures, but we decided not to tackle the line that day. Instead, we used the discount we got with out special metro pass to go on a river cruise, seeing the sights from the Seine. Once we got back, we decided to make our way back to the Metro… and on a whim, decided to ride to the Arc de Triomphe, which was monumental, impressive, and which we also didn’t climb.
Then it was back to the hostel for a nice simple pasta, and bed.
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