Tags
Andy, Aya, Bouillon Chartier, Bouillon Chartier Montparnasse, Catacombs, escargot, Food, food porn, Leah, Les Invalides, Limestone, Lisa, métro, Mike, Mines, Petit Palais, Pokémon, Pont Alexander III, snail, Vingt Vins d'Art
Saturday was actually a lovely day with friends and family, albeit with a twist. For the first time I set the breakfast table for four: Andy, Leah, Mike and me.
After a nice start, we were sobered by our first activity: a visit to the Catacombs of Paris. This is a subterranean boneyard containing the remains of around 6 million Parisians. They were initially buried in ordinary graveyards, but as Paris grew and became more dense the old cemeteries overflowed and became health hazards. The ancient graveyards were also in the way of the vision of rulers like Louis-Napoleon III, who remade Paris in the mid-19th century from a medieval labyrinth into a modern city with long, wide Avenues and Boulevards. The boneyard is actually just a tiny percentage of the tunnels running under the southern part of Paris, an underground limestone quarry which was mined for centuries before this part was repurposed as a boneyard.
There was a kerfuffle at the entrance. I had assiduously reserved our tickets exactly seven days in advance (though I hadn’t realized that the slots open up every half hour as 7*24*60 minutes elapses!) Each ticket required the name of the visitor, which I duly entered, and then sent to Andy, Leah and Mike so they would have them on their own phones. Somehow, however, I failed to get my ticket on my phone! I was turned away initially, but after much hemming and hawing they looked up the tickets on their actual computer and let me in. Only fair since 6 million Parisians had already been allowed in for free.
I had visited the Catacombs more than fifty years ago but I still recalled with a shiver the warning carved over the entrance to the boneyard reading, “Stop! This is the Empire of Death”
Once again I took a deep breath and crossed the threshold. Once again I was weirded out by the sheer number of bones, and the elegant ways in which some were stacked.
I was reminded of T. S. Eliot in the Wasteland (derived from the Inferno), “I had not thought death had undone so many.” And yet there was also a peculiar feeling of lightness: “They’re all dead … and we aren’t!“
After the Catacombs we walked a mile or so to Bouillon Chartier Montparnasse, the restaurant where we planned to meet Lisa and Aya for lunch. The assiduous reader will recognize this as the very same restaurant where I had taken Lisa, Aya and Lisa’s sister Valerie a few weeks earlier. It was in the neighborhood, it’s fabulous, and I wanted to show it also to Andy, Leah and Mike, so pourquoi pas?
It turned out that Leah, like Mike and me, is a Pokémon player, so we interrupted our walk once or twice to capture prize Pokémon, take down gyms, etc.
Carrying on a great tradition started by Andy five years ago, I photographed Mike before, during and after his first escargot (snail).
He was much less equivocal about his dessert.
Andy and Leah and I said our goodbyes that evening since they had to make a very early start to catch their 6 am flight from Charles de Gaulle airport. It was great fun to host Andy for our third adventure in Paris, and for Leah’s first.
Mike and I had time for another adventure, so we took the métro over to the Petit Palais, which he had noticed the previous day. As I have mentioned on other occasions, the only petite thing about the Petit Palais is that it’s next to the Grand Palais (closed for several years of renovations).
The Petit Palais is home to an eclectic collection of Paris-related art. Although most of the masterpieces have been hoovered up by more famous museums, I always find something to catch my eye there. At this time of war and homelessness I found this painting — entitled “Without Asylum — The Expelled” — especially affecting.
After the Petit Palais I walked us across Pont Alexander III, hands down the most gorgeous bridge in Paris. Mike wanted to keep going, however, up to the gate to Les Invalides, the tomb of Napoleon Bonaparte (which I haven’t been to since college days). We were a bit too late to get inside, and we were getting hungry, so we métro-ed back to Saint-Paul and foraged again there for dinner. We were lucky to find an outdoor table at Vingt Vins d’Art, a restaurant I had walked by many times when I spent a month in the area but had never eaten at. It had a Japanese-inflected French menu, and served us both very satisfactory meals.