Paris

OK, we're tourists. Plain and simple. We had a grand time in Paris. Saw the Eiffel Tower, the Arc d'Triumphe, the Catacombes, the sewers, Notre Dame, Vincennes, the Middle Ages Museum, and generally hung around on the streets watching Paris be Paris.

Paris doesn't smell. Not even in August. Well, it does smell a bit. Garlic and Chinese breath, that sweet flower smell all over. Maybe Paris does smell, but the French do use deodorant - mostly.

It's expensive. Food and beer are twice the price as in the countryside. Coffee's over 2€.

It's massive. Not like New York or Chicago. For about 5 miles in any direction there are 5 and 6-story buildings. No skyscraper infested downtown. Even around the city center it's still 5 and 6-story buildings, just older ones.

It's drying. We spent 3 days with uncurable thirst. Maybe it's the air. Maybe the french fries. Leffe beer didn't help much and is 3 to 4 euros for .25 liter. Even broke down and spent 1.60€ for a small bottle of water once.

Getting around is easy. Pay about 18€ for a 3-day Metro/bus pass and you're off. The metro map and a map of the streets showing the metro stops is all you need. Of course there is no adequate map of the bus system. They're everywhere and head in every direction. At every bus stop there's a map showing where the bus goes and another showing the immediate area. You don't need to carry an atlas-sized map book at all (like we saw lots of tourists doing).

Of course our wanderings could have been more efficient. Consider the day we went to Chateau de Vincennes. Walked a kilometer north from the hotel to the #8 metro. Took that about 6 stops west where it intersected the #1 metro which would take us back east to the chateau. It was broken. Headed to the street and took the #23 bus which we found out didn't go all the way to the chateau on Mondays. From the end of that line, we were told about the #325 bus which went on out to the chateau. To head downtown from there, we took the #325 back to the other end of the line and it passed within 1 block of our hotel on the way. Arrrgh.

First, the romantic Seine from our hotel window. Yep, we stayed right on the river, just 4 miles upstream from Notre Dame. Romantic only goes a couple of miles but where else in Paris do you get a 3-star hotel with air-conditioning and free parking for 89€ per night?

History: Notre Dame is old. Construction started in 1163. It was a big task which didn't end until 1345. It's a big place but more on that a bit later.

In front of the cathedral there's a small underground museum that shows Roman remains and the foundations of buildings that were in the area from before the church was there up until they were cleared in the 1800s for the present plaza. Good place. Much like the archeology site we saw in Barcelona.

That plaza is about 20ft above the original dirt the Roman's built on. In fact, all of downtown Paris is built on the rubble of past buildings.

Paris, before the Roman's came. Seven hills and four islands.
The seven hills are still there but there's only two islands left.
The marshy loop north of the Seine has been long filled in.
The island to the far right was dredged out for fill dirt before 1000AD.

The Romans built on the Isle de la Cite (where Notre Dame is) and expanded southwards.

In the middle ages, it became a larger city with walled defenses.
This is now the Latin Quarter on the Left (south) Bank
and just a small part of the Right Bank.

Like we said. Notre Dame is big. It's humongous. It's really impressive. Even more so when you consider it was built in the 1200s.

When we (and hundreds of others) went in, there was a service in progress, seemingly oblivious to the tourists walking around the perimeter taking flash pictures. Louts.

As amazing as the building itself are the three "rose" windows. The one in front, unfortunately is not visible due to the organ in front of it. This organ, by the way, was really really loud during the mass and even full of people, echoed strongly enough to really obscure the tune.

And of course there's lots of saints, statues, and other windows.

While we're still in the middle ages, a trip to the Middle Ages Museum is in order. There's stuff here from the Roman days through the 1500s. The museum itself is in an abbey built in 1485 over ruins of a Roman bath.

History: Roman baths are the most popular ruins simply because they were used the longest. After the Germanic tribes (in this area) and the Anglos (or is it Saxons, in England) took over the Roman towns back in the 3rd and 4th century they used the structures and the baths had water, comfort, heat. In 300AD these were 4-star hotels.

The most famous of the collection is the 6 tapestries making up The Lady and the Unicorn. It was done in the 1400s. They are displayed in a very dark room that has no air-conditioning - must be rotting away slowly, but it's protected from UV. As usual, no flash pictures. Immediately below is an unedited view of the room. The rest have been enhanced with Paint Shop Pro.

The artistry of this tapestry is incredible. The faces of the mythical and common animals are amusing.

The famous gilded residence in Paris is, of course, Versailles. So we ignored Versailles. Instead we visited the Chateau de Vincennes on the other side of Paris.

Versailles

Huge.
Full of tourists.
Fabulous furnishings, hall of mirrors.
Gardens.
Home of Louis XIV through XVI. 1682-1789

Vincennes

Small.
A tour group with 6 people.
Completely empty of furniture, tapestries, paint, anything.
Construction crews and dust.
Home of Louis VII through Louis XIV. 1162-1682

History: The site of Vincennes, east of Paris, was used back in the 1100s as a hunting ground and a summer manor by Louis VII and Philip Augustus.

Charles V built the keep, walls, and 9 high towers in the 1300s. These still stand and are the mass of these pictures. The keep is an impressive medieval structure, consisting of 4 round connected towers 160ft high. After this time, Vincennes was, in effect, a walled city surrounded by woods and distinct from Paris. It was the main seat of the royalty while Paris was the seat of government. They started building the chapel in 1379 but it wasn't finished until 1552 (and we think road construction takes a long time).

The English invaded France in the early 1400s and King Henry V of England took up residence at Vincennes until his death in 1422.

The 1600s brought the Louis's (what's the plural of Louis?). By now the keep wasn't in fashion, drafty, small, not renaissance enough. So they built a more proper residence on the south end of the grounds which still stands, awaiting restoration. Then Louis XIV comes along and gets laughed at by the kings of Spain and England since the residence is too small and he builds Versailles and moves the family.

A military school moves into the residence and an arsenal is built in the north end. The keep and the towers are used as jails (the Marquis de Sade, for instance) both before and after the revolution. The military continue to use the place right up until the end of WWII. It's the army headquarters for France from 1936-1940 and the German central France headquarters from 1940-1944. Before moving out, though, the Germans trash the place thoroughly and it's still being restored to full tourist status - construction is due to finish in 2007.

So much for the history. Right now it's a big construction site and the keep towers themselves are being tuck pointed and are closed. Still, the guided tour, given in English and Italian for 3 couples, was 2 very interesting hours. We went into the front turrets of the keep and around some of the walls and then into the chapel which is largely untouched and completely empty except for a couple of statues and a big pile of sand.

Looking north from the keep. Post WWII buildings fill the courtyard and
are used now to hold the French military records.

History: During the 1700s, when Paris became the capitol of France, it grew tremendously. Starting in 1785, the cemeteries of old Paris were destroyed to gain more space and to stop plagues coming from seepage of the overcrowded cemeteries into the Seine. Underground stone quarries just outside the south edge of old Paris which were used since the Roman days were re-used. Digging crews would load what were by then mostly skeletons onto carts which were escorted by priests at night to the new location where the bones were tossed in one cemetery at a time. This went for 3 years. We haven't seen how many people (ex-people) were moved but it has to be millions.

Later, the Chief of Mines (who was still in charge) had crews line up the femurs and skulls in decorative patterns and opened the catacombs for public tours starting in 1810. Piles are arranged by cemetery and stone plaques tell which is which. One depository is still open and a major tourist attraction. Hey, why not? We wanted to see it.

To visit, you first climb 60ft down a stone spiral stairway, then walk about a half mile through a tunnel to the area containing the bones. A labyrinth through the actual catacomb is quite interesting - and full! Both sides of the path are lined 5ft high with femurs and skulls on the facing edge of bone piles 10ft back to the walls of the quarry. Then you climb 83 spiral steps back to the surface. Then you're back in the sunlight on a backstreet and get to figure out how to get to anywhere you can find on a map. Neat.

It's dark inside. Enough electric light to make walking safe but not enough for pictures or to encourage exploration. They aggressively do not allow flash photography. You'll notice some of the pictures below are basically grey and others seem considerably brighter and have some orange color - Bob used a 400 ASA setting on the camera for the later which did well but gives a very grainy photo. The grey ones have been enhanced by Paint Shop Pro to give much more detail.

Oh, and yes, the bones are loose. No cement holds the stacks together and the femurs on top move easily. These edging bones were laid in a cross-hatch pattern like a solid log cabin.

There are no rats. There's really no food. And there's not much smell. Mainly musty but not at all overpowering or even objectionable.

History: Napoleon put up the money (well, the country's money) to build this memorial to his military victories. This was in 1806 before things started to go bad on the eastern front. It wasn't finished until the 1830s. There's a tomb of an Unknown Soldier (WWI) in the middle with a memorial flame.

The real triumph is that traffic navigates around the massive roundabout without many accidents. There are 12 streets that each feed and exit from the circle. Without a helicopter it's impossible to get a view of this mayhem. Seemingly cars, busses, and motorcycles just bound out into the traffic and head for the apex. Cars heading back out stop and let them pass.

Actually it's more amazing that the occasional silly tourist runs across traffic to get to the middle - there's a pedestrian tunnel that is much saner.

We didn't do the Louvre. We're only in Europe for the summer and if we went to the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the Louvre, and the two dozen Picasso museums in France we wouldn't have any more time. That's our story and we're sticking to it.

But you have to admire someone who can make a statue with so great a headache (right and below).

The park in back of the Rodin Museum where a lot of his famous sculptures are in bronze allows pictures.

History: Built in 1889 for the World's Fair commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Revolution. Was scheduled to be torn down as an eyesore in 1909 but was great for radio antennas. It's 984 ft to the top and was the highest structure in the world until the Empire State Building (I think).

Gad, the tourists. Had to have been 10,000 on the Saturday we were there. Two legs have elevators (10.50 to the top) and two have stairs to the second level (3). All four had lines way past the "30 minutes from here" signs. The place is run by the Societe Nouvelle D'Exploitation de la Tour Eiffel. Great name.

Surprisingly, it's surrounded by grass parkland with trees and a pond even goes up to one of the legs. You always see pictures of the tower running (generally) east-west where there's open ground. It's also just a block from Seine. Pictures never show the two together and you can't really get a view of both, even from across the river.

At night, the Eiffel Tower is lit up spectacularly. You can see every girder. At about 9:55pm hundreds of strobe lights started flashing over the whole tower. This went on for 15 minutes. Absolutely stunning. Terry, don't ever say I don't take you anywhere.

The Romans let the sewage go down the streets to the Seine where it was washed downriver and away. There weren't very many Romans - just a colony on the Isle de le Cite and across the river. Muddy but effective. Likewise, in the middle ages while Paris expanded out on the Left Bank, there weren't enough people to cause problems other than stink and the nuisance of wiping sandals. The streets were first paved with stone around 1200 and a drain ran down the middle.

The first sewer was built in 1370 but it was mainly a stone-lined fetid canal leading to the Seine. Louis the Great (that's the 14th, or as his friends called him, XIV) had a sewer built on the Right Bank around 1700. Still an open canal. By this time, aqueducts were bringing water into Paris as the wells just weren't good enough.

Napoleon expanded the aqueduct system and the city grew a lot; using a lot more water. He called the bigger water availability his greatest gift to France. But it was still dumped mainly into the streets. Plagues, stink, lots of wiping of feet. So he started an underground sewer system and 30km were built during his reign.

In 1850 two guys named Haussmann and Belgrand designed the sewer system for what was then Paris and it still serves that area of the city (map below). These vaulted tunnels were big enough to carry hold drinking and non-drinking water pipes and the city rejoiced when it was done in 1878. Sewer water and rain water run sometimes in adjacent channels - usually in the same tunnel and that's why, to this day, you can walk by a street drain and catch really foul odors. But this allowed rain water to be used to flush the sewers if necessary.

The best result of this effort was that all sewage started to be sent out of the city before it went into the Seine. At least for Parisians. This required pumps and channels under the Seine, but it worked. For a while. People really got mad north of Paris where the water was worse and worse. Hotels and spas along the river even closed.

After WWI sewage treatment fields were set up north of town and later this was changed from dumping sewage onto dirt to the circular processing plants we are familiar with today.

The original tunnels are still there. They're big enough to walk in upright and of course there's a tour. Tourists have to have something to do. Actually they started giving sewer tours in 1892. Then, electric open train cars gave top-hatted gentlemen rides one day a month. From 1920 until 1975 rides were given in boats. Now you walk the better part of a kilometer through a number of tunnels.

Oh, by the way, Victor Hugo was a friend of a guy named Bruneseau, the chief sewer inspector under Napoleon, so Jean Valjean's excursions weren't far fetched.

Nope, these are stuffed. We only saw one rat while we were underground.
Terry was so brave - she didn't squeal or anything.

Below is a full-scale model of how they clean the sediment from the tunnels under the Seine. Everywhere else, they can go into manholes and take scraping equipment. There's access at least every 50 meters. For the long run under the river a big wood ball is put in the circular tunnel. It floats to the top and is pushed along causing a high-pressure area at the bottom which flushes the sand and grit along.