Paris - The Finale

Had to post this late, did not have a chance before. Posts for Bern and Interlaken coming in the next few hours...
Our last day in Paris was a bit less eventful then the first 2 but still very good! We started by sleeping in because we were tired and not sure what we were going to do today anyway. We got up, got ready, and went downstairs to the common room to hang out. We weren't really feeling Versailles too much anymore, with the rainy weather and late day already. We went out and got some crepes and Sharon dropped some stuff off at the post office as we made up our minds. We decided that instead we would go to the catacombs since we hadn't made it there yet either. So we got on the metro and headed south to there.

The area of the city the catacombs were in was actually further south then our map went (it was not a full city map apparently) so we ended up having some trouble because of that. We found the catacombs themselves quickly though after emerging from the station so we got on line. The line was actually very short and quick (I guess the rain kept people away?) and it was a good thing too because we ended up getting in to the catacombs at around 3:35 and it closed at 4. We got our ticket (4€... it's weird but a lot of places in France list prices in this new weirder format 4€, pr 4€50 for 4.50) and went on in. We decended down and down and down, and when we reached the bottom we had to navigate our way through the mostly dark never ending corridors. Luckily Sharon had a flashlight! After walking a while under ground we finally emerged in the first opening of the burial grounds and... woah

The bones were endless! They were stacked as high as me, packed tightly, and stretched on making walls for an endless maze of passages. I'm glad they restrict where you can walk to a set path because it would be impossible to make your way through the macabre maze unguided. There were designs made out of the bones in the stacks as well. There were a number of skull and crossbone designs, and skulls were made into shapes in the pile like crosses, hearts, and archways. We explored there for a while, and at the end we had to ascend the 84 step spiral stair case to the surface. When we walked out, it was suprising just how far away from the entrance we were.

After the catacombs we decided that we should cook dinner in the hostel kitchen tonight. We dropped our stuff back at the rioom and went out to a nearbye shopping market and got some food to cook. We got back, waited for some people to clear out of the kitchen, and started cooking. While we were we met Ben fom Canada and Kristan from Australia and hung out for a while. After our food was ready, we invited Ben to join us for dinner (Kristan had left, but she came back later and had some food as well) We had chicken, rice, pasta, garlic vegtables, baguettes, strawberries, cherries, and a mushroom sauce. It was raelly good! (But not as good as our shrimp meal from Liverpool... that was awesome.)

After we ate and cleaned up Ben joined usa s we went out to the Eiffel Tower to try and see it light up and sparkle. You see, all night the tower is lit up but on the hour for 3 minutes it does this new sparkling thing and we wanted to see it at 11. We ended up getting there at 11:05. Boo. So we sat down in the grass beside it and hung out for a while until it hit midnight and the tower started sparkling, it was beautiful! After that we made our way back (via taxi, the metros were all closed at this point) and turned in for the night.

Next, Switzerland!