The Accidental Rave

Saturday, Sept 24

We were up so early on our first full day, we really made it a FULL day.  We were out the door by 7am to go for breakfast.  I don't know where we ended up but the streets were empty.  Apparently no one was up except for us.  We found an open cafe and did the whole patio table experience.  We ordered the complete breakfast, croissant, a roll with butter and jam, coffee, juice and two eggs (fried or omelet).  We both ordered omelet but I got fried.  It was delicious.  All of it.  I don't even know how to begin to describe the croissant.  Heavy with butter but still airy and light.  I know completely understand the term 'melt in your mouth'.  Amazing.  Plus our waiter was very nice and even offered to take our picture.  I wouldn't have dared ask the previous waiter to do that for us.

One of the two things I wanted to do in Paris was visit the Catacombs.  We finished breakfast by 8 or so and decided to walk since it didn't seem too far on the map.  It was about 45 minutes which was perfect to just walk the streets of Paris before it really woke up.

The Catacombs opened at 10.  We arrived a little after 9am.  There was already a line forming.  We got in line but Alisma decided to skip the experience and went off to look around the neighbourhood (which I may find out the name of before I post).   I was close to the front of the line. I am glad I got there early, by 10 it wound around the block.  I eventually got through the door at 10:30.

The entrance is very unassuming, just a plaque over a door into what looks like a black hut.

First there is a long, very tight spiral staircase to get down to the tunnels. (I later read it is 130 steps, it seemed like more). Then the tunnel to get to the catacombs is so long I was starting to worry I was in the wrong place.  

 Then there are some informational signs and then a door with a sign that says something along the lines of 'beware, the dead are beyond here'.  That's an understatement.  There must be hundreds of thousands, if not millions of skeletons in there.

I tried not to use my flash too much when other people were around but the crowd slimmed out by the end of the tunnel so I got in a few.

this is called the barrel

Then another long damp tunnel and the stairs up.

These took me out blocks from the entrance where I had no idea where I was.  I had to ask a random man to point me in the right direction.  I have to mention, every French person we have encountered has been very nice and super helpful.

(This is where I stopped last time and now it is Monday afternoon, I have so much to catch up on!)

Alisma and I met up at about 11:30 and headed off to the Arc de Triumph on the Metro.  We spend a lot of time on the Metro.  I was trying to keep track of the lines (and corresponding colours) but it was too much to keep track of.

Le Arc

 Then we wandered down the Champs Elysees which is a very wide boulevard that runs from the Arc to the Louvre.  Close to the Arc, it is lines with very expensive shops.  As it get closer to the Louvre, it is treed lined and a lovely stroll.

I took this as I was trapped in the median after trying to cross to late for the light

Why is there always an obelisk? 

Apparently, this is the fountain where Anne Hathaway throws her phone in a movie,
so here is Alisma reenacting Anne's scene

Random pond

Our view as we enjoyed the free chairs provided by the city in many of their green spaces

Unknown.  They do like their statues here

Then the end of the Champs, where there is a little Arch.  When you look through the little Arch, you can see the big Arch.

The little Arch

If you squint and ignore those pesky tourists, you can see the Arc de Triumph way back there.

The topper

And that took us to the Louvre.  But before I get into that, I will mention that we walked into a robbery of sorts.  I had been warned by many people about people using distraction to steal out of your bag.  We came upon a tourist couple surrounded by four young women with clipboards.  They had just that minute realized that they were being robbed and a minor scuffle ensued.  One of the women actually approached us with her clipboard 'would we like to answer a few questions' as the tourist and one of the girls was schuffling over the bag and another girl was throwing money (it looked like at least a couple of hundred Euro) onto the street and claiming they had dropped it.  We kept walking, thanks, but no thanks on your 'survey'.

The Louvre.  We didn't go in but we did enter the courtyard and look around.  It is a beautiful building, huge.  And there is the glass pyramid as the museum entrance.  Here are some photos.

Louvre selfie

The Louvre is on the Seine.  We could hear loud music starting out on the road that runs between the museum and the river.  That was the exit so we headed out into some sort of street party.  It seemed to be about a block long and had horrible techno music blasting out of a truck thing.  There was lots of young people openly drinking and it was very crowded so we just headed over the nearest bridge and went in a couple of blocks to have lunch (away from that awful music - I am so old).

After that, we wandered around for a while and visited Shakespeare and Co., a very cool bookstore with books in English. I bought nothing.  Alisma got a book and some postcards.

Shakespeare & Co.

Then we wanted to visit Notre Dame.  As we got close to the river again, the music was just as load even though we had walked blocks away from the Louvre.  We got to the Bridge to Notre Dame and a dozen or more police vans came whipping by (as much as any car can 'whip' along the Seine on a Saturday, mid-afternoon).

The bridge was closed to traffic except cop cars.

We got to Notre Dame but the line was way too long.  I did my one line in Paris.  So, instead we had a crepe and looked at the outside.

Having a crepe:

This is where things started to get a bit out of our control.  The music as so loud, it was reverberating off of the buildings and seemed to be coming from everywhere.  That plus the non-stop sirens convinced us it was time to go home.  But we had to get to the other side of the river to get to our Metro stop.  So, into the crowd we plunged.  Once we were in it, we figured out it was a moving party.  There were huge open buses full of young drunk, dancing people.   Each bus had gigantic speakers which were blasting deafeningly loud techno-music.  The streets were crammed with more drunk dancing young people.  It was madness.

It crossed my mind that this is the sort of situation one wants to avoid if one is afraid of terrorist targets but there really was no getting away from it.  We were traveling along with it since it was heading toward our station.  We finally got to the station to discover it was closed.  Back in the party to the next station.  Also closed.  We were getting pretty far along, we asked a cop where the closest open station was.  He said Bastille so we headed there.  We were rounding to the top of the stairs just as they were closing the gate - closed.  That was when we gave up.   We were a couple of blocks ahead of the first bus so we just found a cafe and had a cup of tea for an hour.  From our vantage point, we watched desperate tourists with wheelie luggage trying to get out without Metro or taxis.  I can only imagine how many of them missed whatever transportation (planes, trains?) they were hoping to catch

A moment of tranquility as the cops arrive

this was going on behind us as we had our tea

As we were finishing our tea, more cops arrived.  It turns out Place Bastille was the end point of the parade.   Which meant that all of those thousands of drunk kids ended up bottled up in Bastille Square (Circle?).   As each bus arrived, it turned the music off and disgorged its passengers to a even huger street party.   They had all of the entrances blocked off so there was no traffic.  When we finally made it to the edge and past the barriers, we discovered anyone who left was not allowed back in.  We finally found an open Metro station and had to take a bit of a convoluted route to get home but we made it.  And again, worth mentioning, even young, drunk and dancing, the citizens of France were very well behaved and respectful.

In Place de Bastille

I looked up what was going on when we got back to our apartment.  It was called Techno Parade Paris.  I have to say, that name is very accurate. http://www.technoparade.fr/

I am now two days behind.  I will try to speed up.  We leave Paris tomorrow so I'm not sure what my internet situation will be in the near future.  No time to edit, sorry for the typos.