Catacombs

You may recognize this from last weeks Coast to Cote.

Last weekend I went to Paris for a quick day trip with a few friends. I had planned on doing mostly museums for the day and getting some good food (which I did. Pad Thai is not to be had in Limoges so I profited in Paris). As we were driving into the city (we entered from the south) I recognized the Catacombs. Ryan and I had tried to visit them when he was in Paris in October and were bitterly disappointed to find them temporarily closed due to vandalism. When I saw a healthy line stretched out from the door of the Catacombs I knew they were open and suggested it to the group, who immediately got on board.


Just your typical dork.


My lovely Scottish lady: Paula


My Columbian room-mate Lizandro


Alexandru: our Romanian friend. We are so multicultural here in Limoges!


Trekking to the bones.


For a long time you walk through long carved out hallways until finally you get to this sign. It reads: Stop! This is the Empire of Death.



When you finally get into the bone section its really dark and hard to take pictures. They wont let you use flash because you might scare the ghosts but most tourists seem to ignore this rule. For the first 5 minutes of walking I was pretty impressed. Then I started feeling oppressed by the sheer number of bones. Its strange how they had them stacked. All you ever see is the thigh bone and the skull. Everything else is piled behind I suppose. I had no idea just how vast this place was. I read that millions of remains have been placed in the Catacombs. Originally the space was a quarry, but when conditions at the cemetery got unhealthy the city of Paris decided to move the bones underground. Im not sure at what point they decided to make them into the carefully stacked piles so people can visit them.

Seeing the Catacombs was definately a different experience but it was different from what I thought it would be. It was pretty humbling actually to see how many people have come before you and to think of all the people that will come after you and that in the end you are just a pile of bones (ashes for me!). The air was a bit moist and stale and after a bit Lizandro and Alexandro made a beeline for the exit to get some fresh air.


Just a tip: Dont bring your children here.

The Dune of Pyla

On day three of my stay with Pascal and Isabelle we went to the Dune of Pyla, the largest dune in Europe I'll have you know! In the morning of this day we went to a cafe overlooking the ocean in Lacanau to watch the surfers and eat some treats and discuss our project for the day. The clouds had rolled in overnight and our day threatened to be soggy, but with smiles on faces we decided (or I decided rather and my gracious hosts crossed their fingers) to drive out to the dune and hope for sun. We were rewarded! Enjoy some pictures now.


Isabelle and Pascal


Oysterbeds in the Arcachon Bay


Pascal used to work at a pool located in one of the camping sites right around the dune when he was younger. He said that the dune moves to much that that pool is now UNDER the dune.










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We had a lovely walk up and a nice view from the top and we ate some snack and got sand everywhere because just as we sat down the wind whipped up and Pascal was finding sand in his pockets all the rest of the night!

Bordeaux - Cheese and Beauty

Limoges! And our food.

On day 2 of my stay with Pascal and Isabelle we went to Bordeaux. They took me to a special place for lunch, only revealing the secret minutes before we got there. We went to a place called Baud et Millet in Bordeaux that specializes in cheese! Every dish is chocked full of cheese or you can even pay for the cheese buffet (a staggering 23 euros) and have a free for all in the cave (an underground room where they had all the cheeses laid out on plates and a humidifier in the room to keep the cheeses....moldy?)

If you are a cheese lover this is the place for you! The staff was super friendly and even kept us from making a grave mistake. We had planned on getting an appetizer each and then a main dish (more tasting of cheeses you see) but the waiter quickly squashed these dreams, warning us that the plates are huge. Thank goodness he said something! I ordered an eggplant gratin with mixed veggies and rice topped with Gorgonzola and a Raclette cheese. I swear to you it came out in a casserole dish almost as big as a lasagna dish.


The place was decorated with old adverts for cheese and boxes of cheese and posters of cows and goats playing in fields.

After a lunch that left the 3 of us waddling and holding our stomachs Pascal and Isabelle set me loose on the city. We set our meeting place for the Opera House (pictured below) and I set out for a few hours of wandering.













Hopefully the pictures say it all. Bordeaux is (so far) the prettiest French city I had visited and I can't wait to go back and explore it further.


I just thought this was funny...those French people, always cutting people head's off.

La Cure Gourmande -Paris

Walking down the street towards Bio Bio after getting off at the Opera stop - I was pulled into a brightly lit, mustard yellow store by this creepily charming face. The overall design of the store - the way the colors stood out against the drab concrete facades of its neighbors - was what caught my eye in the first place. But once I found out that the contents of the store were biscuits and sweets...well that just solidified my need to enter.


chocolate chip diamonds!


almond topped cookies!

Now you might think that biscuits and other little tea treats are more of a british thing than a French thing...and well...you'd be right - but these little treasures (as far as I can tell) a fully baked and sold in France. There are a few stores in Belgium and one in Barcelona - but it seems that is the extent of this companies expansion at present.

Anyhow - biscuit in this sense - refers to a British style biscuit which is really a cookie - not grandma's down south biscuits (though I would kill for one now that I've thought of it). A bit different from our cookies in America - these biscuits tend to be dryer then our cookies but usually offer plenty of sweet taste or savory filling - and are meant to be eaten with tea (or milk, soy milk, what have you).

But this little store doesn't stop at biscuits, they also offer chocolates, sweet candies, chocolate olives, caramels, nougat, and each comes wrapped in a pretty little tin or pail.





Check out their website. You can order boxes online, get nutritional info (why? it's dessert?!) or even open you're own franchise!



PS...I sent a box of little goodies home to a certain someone. If the treats are well received by her I will bring more home for others when I'm home at Christmas.

Parc des Buttes Chaumont - Paris

Parc des Buttes Chaumont, situated in the 19th arrondissement of Paris was commissioned by Napoleon III to rework the former limestone quarry into a beautiful public park complete with a little lake, waterfalls, a folly and lots of trees and plants of different origin.

You can get to this park from the 5 or 7 line. : Buttes Chaumont, Laumière or Botzaris. But be warned! If you go anytime soon - the stop on the 7 where you need to transfer to get to these stops (Jaures) is currently closed. So you have to hoof it from the stop before that. Not the nicest area to walk in to get to the park...fair warning.

In hopes of something similar to the sorrow walks over Harper's Ferry I brought Ryan here for the morning to get a bit of nature time.

One of the first things we came upon was this sculpture of Pan




and his owl!


climbing the exotic trees...probably a no-no but this one is a bad seed.

The most picturesque part of the park (at least from far away - its got graffiti all over it up close) is the belvedere of Sybil- which is modeled after the monument of the same name in Italy.



There is also a shallow man-made lake that runs around the cliff with big old trees stretching their branches out over the water.





There is a suspension bridge that runs over the lake up to the folly. I took a short video here that will be featured in an upcoming project. From what I've read this bridge is referred to as the "suicide bridge." Charming!

Some other things about the park I didn't know - there are 4 wifi spots that are part of a city wide wireless internet program. There are 2 restaurants in the park, so I'm told, but I surely didn't see them. Park must be much bigger than what we saw. It's one of the largest in Paris - but it happened to be kinda cold and rainy on this particular day so we didn't stay as long as we might have otherwise.


We did explore though! Gee whiz...someone looks a little scared!

Also, in September, the park hosts Paris's annual Silhouette Short Film Festival.

Wilde Halloween

As I mentioned in an earlier post - the French don't think too much of Halloween. So - as we didn't have any concrete plans and no costumes to wear - we decided to improvise this Halloween and do something a little different.

We went to the graveyard to visit some old dead people! The Cemetiere du Pere Lachaise hosts such famous guests as Oscar Wilde, Edith Piaf, Frederic Chopin, Sarah Bernhardt, Marcel Proust, and Jim Morrison.

The cemetery is open daily and is best reached by the Pere Lachaise stop off the metro. We happened to have a beautiful fall day and we were far from being the only visitors - though it seemed may were there to see actual family - and had I know (!!) I would have visited MY family there. Apparently the Roman's (my step-dad's mother's family) has a plot. Wish I had known before we went!


Ryan making house calls.

We wound our way through the graves - often leaving the paved paths and foraging right through the thick of it to peak in mausoleums and looks for ghosties.






Couldn't go in all of them but they looked pretty from what I could see.


Ryan really used this as a "portfolio" building opportunity and jumped into as many pictures as I was willing to take :)


I really thought Jim would have a more impressive gig going on here.

No ghosts to report but many harbingers of death stalking the graves.






Ryan is a friend of all animals. Even harbingers.


Caught.




We could have taken this a smidge more seriously...

The highlight of the trip was Oscar Wilde's tomb.

The hundreds of kisses on Wilde's tomb threaten to permanently deface Wilde's resting place. I read an artical that said that scratches could be sanded down, pen marks could be washed off, but lipstick - because of the animal fat in it - bonds with the stone and can't really be cleaned off.


Also I read that the statue has been castrated several times. The first time it was castrated by the groundkeeper who found the size of the member to be offensive...he used the testicles as a paperweight. It was restored at some point and then re-castrated by some hoodlums in the 60's. Poor angle.


Happy Halloween!