Europe 2017--Paris

I could have honestly stayed in the Normandy area all week and been perfectly happy.  But off to the big city we went!

Upon arriving at our hotel, our room was not quite made up yet so we were "upgraded" to another room--the upgrade was the view from our window:

The view from our room--not too shabby:)

I had a piano student who told me about the Paris Catacombs a couple years ago and I had been dying to go ever since.  I was glad that I looked at the online website and pre-bought tickets because there is always about a 3+ hour wait to get in!

The city of Paris began collapsing after many years of un-supervised limestone mining.  So the city needed to "fill" the underground tunnels with something.  The did build supporting pillars in some areas which solved part of the problem.  Another major problem the city faced was its over-flowing graveyards.  One graveyard actually cracked and the bodies spilled into people's cellars nearby.  So they began to dig up the bodies that had been dead for several years (only skeletons by that point) and they threw them into the catacombs to make room for all the new dying people--lots of plague victims.  At some point, an artist was actually hired to come and arrange the bones into a work of art.  So the walls are literally made with human skulls and femur bones staked onto each other.  There is NO mortar or any type of glue holding them together.  You were able to touch the bones and everything!  There is an estimated 6 million people in the catacombs.  Not everyone's cup of tea but for my family, we're a bit morbid, we LOVED it!  (You can see in the pictures that skulls and femurs were used for the main wall and all the other bones were just thrown behind.)

Ahh, it's a heart!  How cute:)

We then headed over to the Paris Notre Dame Cathedral.  We spent a couple hours in this area before heading over to the Madaline Cathedral to watch the One Voice Children's Choir perform.  We left this area about 3 pm.  At 4 pm, there was a terrorist attack at the Notre Dame Cathedral where a man attacked a guard with a hammer--he also had kitchen knives on hand.  When he attacked he said, "This is for Syria!" so this is why it was considered terrorist.  The situation was quickly handled, he was immediately shot and injured by another guard and then taken into custody.  The people in the Notre Dame were on lock-down for about 2 hours and no Americans were being allowed back into the area!  CRAZINESS!!!  So grateful for a watchful eye being over us.  

One Voice Children's Choir
in the Madaline Cathedral

We then headed over to yet another Cathedral--Sacre Coeur.  Chris mostly wanted to see us to make the major hike up the hill to get here.  It was worth the climb.  We were able to hear a Nun Choir which was really cool.  And the view of the city from up here was AMAZING!

Because of the attack earlier in the day, this is what we saw at every tourist place thereafter.

We also hit up a Chocolate Museum.  Check out these cool chocolate sculptures:

The next day (Wednesday) we of course had to go to the Louve:

The "mini" Arch of Triumph

The Mona Lisa

Winged Victory

Venus de Milo

We're pretty sure this one was called:
"The First Ever Selfie"

After the Louve we headed out to the Palace of Versailles.  Incredible palace!  I sure would have been ticked too if I were a starving Paris peasant watching the royal family live like this:

The royal bed that the kings
NEVER slept in!  It was just for show!

And just in case we hadn't walked enough for the day...we hit the Eiffel Tower:)  Oh yeah...we climbed it!  

Views from the Tower:

Every night at 10 pm, the tower lights up and sparkles!!!  As you can tell from the pictures, it's not very dark at 10 at night.  People wait all around the area just to see this.  It's kinda like the fireworks show at Disneyland:)

We LOVED our time in the big city--we walked 9+ miles everyday but we had so much to see!!!  We mostly used the subway to get from place to place.  The subway is full of performers--some good, other not at all.  On our last day on our subway trip to the train station, we had the privilege of hearing this guy--he was legit.  We gave him all the Euros we had left:)