Saturday 16/7/2016.
Today was a day of the dead. We hired bikes again and cycled our way to the Conciergerie, Paris’s most famous prison, getting an “ooh la la” from a pedestrian as we passed. Right before the action camera bounced out of Lynx’s bike basket and gained a wound on its lens which never healed. Our plan to use the bikes for the free half hour was foiled when there was police presence at the Notre Dame, so they’d sealed the roads and wouldn’t let us take our bikes to the stands. Every other stand we tried was full. We were 9 minutes over our time when we managed to park. Maybe we should have asked the police to pay our €1 cost. We stopped for Neen to have a crepe then went to the Conciergerie – read our history about it on this link.
From a palace to a prison
Marie Antoinette was held there for 2 months before her execution during the French Revolution. They have a cell with a mannequin of her in it. It was an interesting place and nice to see somewhere historical which wasn’t on our list. We cycled to the Bastille monument, where the fort was, then walked down to the ruins of the Bastille prison, where the Revolution started when they stormed it and freed the prisoners. The ruins were in a children’s playground. Quite fitting really – both the scenes of screaming and chaos.
As we were close to Ile St Louis and hadn’t gone there the other day, we walked across and had some sorbet in the I’lle Flottante then caught the metro to the catacombs to continue our day of the dead. Our main reason for visiting Paris was not for love, but for death. Except we got off at the wrong spot and had to hobble a mile to the catacombs. That was Neen’s fault. She’s in charge of public transport. The Metro would continuously highlight our ineptitude with public transport for the remainder of the trip.
City of the dead
It turned out that we’d paid for the audio tour of the catacombs and didn’t have the option to not use it. If you think it’s odd that we didn’t remember what we’d booked, when we went to see Green Day’s American Idiot musical, we got really excited when the woman who examined our tickets directed us to the front row. We booked front row tickets and forgot. Each day is a new adventure.
Remember what we said in Alcatraz about being unable to listen to audio guides when we’re excited? Here we were in an underground city of the dead. Neen said the guide was really interesting. We wouldn’t know. Taking photos of the artistic bone arrangement was too distracting. Between us, we didn’t have enough hands to hold the audio device and take photos while illuminating the gloom. We could have stayed in the catacombs for hours. Hell, we could live there.
We managed to have sections of the catacombs to ourselves for a lot of the time, proving once again, that our superpower is losing our tour group. Cat and Neen did another proposal photo in front of the heart of skulls. A few months later, we had the heart of skulls tattooed on our hips. Neen left the catacombs a long time before we did. We found her waiting for us outside. While an upside to being our friend is eating our food that we don’t like, a downside is having to wait for us to leave places like catacombs and museums. If you come to one of these places with us, you’d better find somewhere comfortable to wait.
When you exit the catacombs, there’s a gift shop across the road. In a repeat of the Alcatraz gift shop, we spent a lot of money in there. €70 to be precise. Our feet hadn’t hurt the whole time we were in the catacombs, so either we were too distracted to notice, or the dead have healing powers.
Food Fight
We wandered the streets for a while, looking for somewhere to eat before getting back on the metro and heading to the main street near our apartment and meeting up with Neen’s friends. We stopped in a bar for cocktails then walked all the way to one end of the street, but the places we stopped in weren’t gluten free for Neen’s friend. It’s hard enough being vegan and having ARFID. Having coeliac disease must be a nightmare. Have you tried gluten free bagels and Weetabix? Cardboard tastes better.
We turned around and walked all the way back, only to go to the first place Neen had spotted – across the road from the bar we’d been in. The whole time it felt like walking on hot coals and knives. The agony in our feet would continue for every single holiday we take, due to having heel spurs, plantar fasciitis, high arches and walking several miles a day to achieve all the sights on our lists. All while wearing gothic boots because we refuse to allow trainers to ruin our carefully cultivated outfits. One day we will visit a chiropodist for help. (Ten years later, we are still moaning about our feet and still have not visited a chiropodist.)
We always feel sorry for the wait staff when they say they can speak English because they have to contend with us explaining what makes chips vegan – being cooked separately from the meat and in oils which aren’t derived from animals.
We can only stay out drinking for so long before we get bored, so we headed back to our apartment at 11 p.m. leaving the other three out drinking. It was our first time of navigating Paris by ourselves and our Google Maps decided to freeze, only working again when we reached the road our apartment was on. Thanks, Google Maps. That was really helpful of you. We spent the rest of the evening uploading our photos and video calling our mum and sister.
Read Day 2.
Read Day 4.