BIG DAY OUT

On this day, Day 4, I did the main things I wanted to do: I went to The Catacombs and The Eiffel Tower. The Catacombs is a long series of tunnels underground where about 6 million people were buried when the cemeteries of Paris were overflowing. The bones of all these people are arranged in neat piles throughout and most of them appear to be from the late 18th and early 19th Centuries. As we were waiting in the queue to get into this cellar of death, we started talking to Emeline and Fabien, two economics students from Rouen. It turned out that they were next going to Les Egouts (or The Sewers, a place that Dad also wanted to see because of his fond memory of Victor Hugo's book, Les Miserables), so we accompanied them there and ended up spending the day with them. The sewers were smelly but also a bit interesting but more so for Dad and Fabien, who were quite excited. We all went to a brasserie for a lunch of baguettes and then on to The Eiffel Tower. The crowds there were huge but it was so much bigger than I thought it would be. The view of Paris is the best view I have ever seen and going up was really scary as people on the ground got smaller and smaller until they looked like ants. Emeline and Fabien have invited us to Rouen next Saturday and will meet us at the train and show us over their town which they say is quite medieval so that is an offer too good to pass up. And it will be great to see Emeline and Fabien again. Also, we are now big fans of The Metro, Paris' underground train system, as it is fast and easy to use.