Shopping and Spelunking

Of course, while in Paris we had to explore some of the fancy department stores, including Galeries Lafayette. While we were not in the position to buy much, we did enjoy taking in the decadent surroundings. I also found these little Noddy figurines for my mother, which I sent to her as a birthday present. Even though I now read them with more than a bit of horror for the depiction of the often evil "Golliwogs," I used to love Enid Blyton's Noddy books. We had the entire set and my mother read them to me and Leigh on a regular basis. I figured she'd be amused by the figurines. Aviva bought herself a Petit Prince keychain; in other words, we each indulged our childhood obsessions with two very different characters.

We also visited the Catacombs, or "les carrières de Paris," a network of subterranean tunnels located in what were originally limestone quarries built during the Roman era. The catacombs contain 6 million bodies, representing more than 30 generations of Parisians. The bodies were moved to the underground tunnels between 1785 and 1859 in order to aleviate overcrowding in the city's cemeteries, which were literally overflowing with rotting corpses.

In order to enter the catacombs, you have to travel down 130 steps on a spiral staircase to the underground vaults that lie about 20 meters below street level. At the entrance to the catacombs is a sign that reads: Arrete. C'est ici L'Empire de la Mort. There's also a sign warning that people with seizures. Claustrophobia, and other "nervous conditions" should not enter the site. Not surprising considering that in passageways that were no more than six to eight feet in width, there were human bones and skulls stacked about four feet high.

Apparently, the 1.7-kilometer stretch the official Catacomb museum offers is only a tiny fraction of the entire network of Paris's subterranean system, which spans more than 300km. Though it's illegal to explore the other portions of the tunnels, secret entrances are scattered throughout the city and groups of people, known as cataphiles, use them for everything from drug dealing to clandestine political and social meetings. There are even special cops, known as cataflics, who patrol the tunnels, fining cataphiles 60 Euros for their illegal antics.