Hey everyone!
I am currently sitting in the foyer to my hotel because the internet in my room somehow got worse overnight. Yes, I am that dedicated to updating this blog.
Well, ok.. really I'm just bored. I went out for a bit yesterday but I'm not feeling great and I'm trying to rest up so that I can be 100% in Spain. So, I've been avoiding going out in the cold as much as possible. I keep waking up feeling like my tonsils are still there because it hurts to swallow. After having a couple cups of tea it feels better. But where was I...ah yes, the blog! I wanted to share with you all some pictures from this past Saturday! As I told you the other day I went to the Catacombs and two museums. The number of pictures I can put up will depend on how slow the internet is down here.
First of all, I should explain what the Catacombs are. I'm just going to say what I can remember from reading a few signs while we were there, and from what I saw for myself. The Catacombs is really one thing, so I'm going to use "is" instead of "are." The Catacombs is a series of underground tunnels that was built a few centuries ago by quarry diggers in France. Because of some incident, all of the bodies buried in the cemetery of innocents had to be dug up and placed somewhere else. There was either a flood..or overcrowding..or something. They started burying all the dead people in these underground tunnels, and families were allowed to visit them. As the burial site for each dead person began to look like it had not been visited for years, the skeletons were moved to the piles of skeletons already under there. So eventually what they had was 8,000 skeletons down there, their bones are piled along the walls in huge stacks, and the skulls rest on top of the piles.
We arrived at the entrance and were confronted with a sales lady who refused to accept my 20 Euro bill, saying she didn't have change. The ticket price was 4 euro for youth (16-25 yrs). Well, I didn't have change, and I sure wasn't going to just hand over 16 extra Euro. Besides, I knew there was no way that she didn't have ANY change. I mean where are we, Bolivia?! She stared at me until I said I'd pay for Hira too, and she handed me back 12 Euro. So off we went down the stairs to reach the underground cemetery. I was immediately nervous. The winding staircase we descended was so tightly wound that there wasn't that hole in the middle that you can look down to see how far you have to go. We just had to descend blindly for what seemed like hours, I kept looking for the moment when the wall would stop curving and we'd be there, but it took a very long time. I started getting nauseous. Once down there we walked through several dimly lit tunnels.
The ground was dirt and the walls were stone and mud brick. Initially I was like "this is so cool, this is JUST like Harry Potter!" Then I noticed that the ceiling was maybe 5 foot 7 inches high. And then I started thinking about how I would escape if I needed to, and I started to feel slightly claustrophobic. The only escape that we knew of was that hellish winding staircase and we were walking farther and farther away from it. There were supposed to be phones down there to call up to someone in case of trouble, but the only one I saw was out of order.
I made myself ignore that fact and that feeling went away. In one area of the tunnel there was a replica of what looked like a roman palace carved into the wall. Apparently the same guy dug them when he was prisoner down there and then he died from a cave in. After walking for 20 minutes through these tunnels, we reached the entrance to the cemetery.
This says "ARRÊTE! C'EST ICI L'EMPIRE DE LA MORT," this translates to "STOP! HERE IS THE EMPIRE OF DEATH."
It smelled funny in there. It wasn't as gross as I'd expected because they weren't whole skeletons, it was just piles of the same looking bone in neat stacks with skulls on top. Hira said she saw a hip bone, but all I saw was what looked like femurs and skulls.
There was a really cool skull and cross bones built into a couple of the piles, but because we weren't allowed to use flash, the picture didn't come out great. As we walked through the cemetery part of the tunnels, we noticed that the ceilings here were dripping every now and then, creating pools of dirty water on the ground. The last thing I wanted to do was get dripped on with what I decided was death juice in a cold underground cemetery from which there was no escape.
At the end of the cemetery there was another winding staircase to return to the land of the living. At this staircase there was a sign that told us exactly how many steps it would be until we reached the top (87). Thank goodness for that sign, or else I think Hira and I might've lost it.
After this we headed over to Musée d'Orsay to see some art. Hira said we should get in free by showing our long stay visas and our Sciences-Po student IDs. We walked over to what we thought was the appropriate entrance (out of like 5 entrances) and Hira, who is in Intermediate French but decided that since she was 2 days from being home she no longer needed to speak french, asked the doorman in english if he spoke english. He shook his head and said "Français, Español, et Italiano." Hira looked at me and said "spanish!" so I hastily switched to spanish mode and said:
"Hablas español?"
"Sí."
"Ok..uhm..somos estudiantes..y.." (we are students..and..)
Then he broke off in French and said something and pointed to the door, motioning for us to enter. After saying what he'd said in french, for some reason unbeknownst to me he switched to italian! The only word I caught was "Inglese." I very bewilderedly entered the revolving door, and behind me Hira, also obviously confused, tried to enter too but she walked straight into the glass. It was priceless.
I really liked this museum, it seemed overwhelmingly large when we first walked in, but after an hour and a half we'd walked through almost 2/3 of it. I don't have pictures from this because they weren't allowed. All of the Monet (which this museum is famous for) was gone for the Monet exhibit at the Grand Palais, but we saw Manet, Van Gogh, and some other guys. It was 4:30 and the last museum we wanted to visit, Musée de l'Orangerie, which is in the middle of the Tuileries Gardens in front of the Louvre, closed at 6pm. We walked across the Seine and through the gardens to wait in line for our free youth tickets.
I absolutely love Musée de l'Orangerie!! I hadn't been before. It is TINY and so it is extremely doable. It is known for the two oval-shaped rooms of Monet panoramic paintings that wrap around the entire room, creating the feeling that you are in his gardens. Those rooms were pretty sweet, but all the seating space was taken so we stood staring for a bit and continued downstairs.
All of the paintings downstairs (we saw Matisse, Renoir, Picasso, and some other people I can't remember), were very beautiful paintings. I really can't appreciate most modern art, but this kind of art I can truly enjoy. And pictures were allowed! (As long as you turned off your flash). So I have a few pictures of paintings that I especially enjoyed. I would put pictures up of these but the internet connection is like Crabbe and Goyle: almost too slow to function.
Of course at this point we needed nourishment.
We chose to descend the walkway in front of the museum to Place de la Concorde (where the end of the Christmas market on the Champs Élysées and the end of the Tuileries Gardens meet) to get it in the form of waffles covered in melted Nutella. For dinner we met Yomna and walked to our Indian restaurant, only to find it closed. It looked like it was undergoing construction. After walking up and down Montparnasse looking for other ethnic food and failing, we settled on Pasta Papa.
Thus ends my last night with the people on my program. That night I was up late, being awoken by tipsy people saying goodbye, someone wanting me to return a library book they forgot about, my roommate getting the handheld luggage weigher she'd borrowed from a girl she doesn't like stuck to her bag, and the 20 minutes that ensued with a parade of people stopping in our room trying to help get it unstuck. Of course, I was glad for these nightly interruptions. Anything to extend my time with new friends. Not to mention, at 3 am all of these events were experienced with a healthy dose of hilarity. I've really enjoyed my time here. I am so grateful that I was able to be a part of this program.
That's all for now. I'm off to pick up some lunch. I may decide to update again later today.
Love,
H.
