Paris from Above and Below

Wow these have been a busy last few days. Both my aunt and uncle, and my good friend Peter from school came to Paris, and though my aunt and uncle had their own plans and things to do, I took on the job of leading my friend around Paris. As a heads up, this blog is a bit out of chronological order...

Paris from Above

Saturday morning, after Peter arrived, I decided that a great first view of Paris would be that from Montmartre, the district that Sacré Cœur is in. As the “mont” part of the name indicates, Montmartre is indeed high up. Looking out from the front of the Basilica, you can see the whole city of Paris, filled with its white buildings and green boulevards. It was really cool, because the last time I saw the city from above like this was towards the end of my first week here. Since then, obviously, I’ve gotten a much better sense of what’s where, what’s what, and what’s important. So I was able to now recognize points on the skyline, thinking, I’ve been there! or we’ll be there later! We really didn’t have a plan for the day, but instead I just took him around to all of my favorite spots. That night, we ended up climbing both the Arc de Triomphe, and the Eiffel Tower (It was nearly 100 degrees and very humid by that point, so we were both super sweaty by the end of the climbs…) At the top of the Arc de Triomphe, we were able to trace out where we spent our day. See, we’d walked nearly 22 miles that day, taken 45,000 steps, and been up for 19 hours! More about our busy day to come. From the top of the Eiffel Tower, the view was actually not great. Since it was so hot, there was a lot of smog in the basin. We couldn’t see much, and the sun had already begun to go down as well. He very much enjoyed watching the 11:00 and midnight light shows, but by that point, we were exhausted and ready to get home.

Though it’s technically not from “above,” I took an evening walk with a friend, Aryanna, down the Seine Monday night. We got a great sunset view of the skyline of Paris. We took the line 5 metro back, which is above ground for its portion across the Seine—a very cool sight.

Montmartre in the Morning, Eiffel Tower in the evening, and a beautiful sunset on the Seine

Paris from Below

One of Peter and my activities on Saturday was to see Notre Dame, despite its renovations. We made it there, but he asked the question that I’d never thought of—why is Notre Dame so famous, if there are many other churches that look just as beautiful all around? Well, our question was answered when we went below the cathedral, to the “archeological crypt”: a small museum housing ruins of the Ancient Roman city beneath Paris and the Notre Dame cathedral. We learned that the Seine has actually moved 55 meters since the time of that Roman City, and the ground has risen significantly since then, just with the deposition of sediments and other things. Notre Dame also was made famous by the book The Hunchback of Notre Dame, not the other way around, which I found very interesting.

My next few Below Paris adventures all revolve around the Metro. When Aryanna and I got off the Line 5 Metro at Bastille, we weren’t expecting much. We both live by Bastille and are there often, but neither of us have been to the Line 5 section of the station. Turns out that there, they have a portion of the old wall of Bastille, which I thought was super cool.

I have tried to keep my excitement to a minimum on the blogs, because it’s a rather mundane topic, but I LOVE the metro. Not the transportation aspect, but more the layout and organization of it—fitting for an engineer, huh? There’s one line I’d been dying to take: 7 bis (bis is kind of like ½ for French addresses, metro lines, etc.) It makes a circle with a “panhandle,” so you can hop on the train at the station Louis Blanc, ride it all the way around, and get off right where you started. In fact, the trains at Louis Blanc don’t even turn around. The conductor just switches sides and pulls the train right out of the same tracks it came in on! Almost like a car pulling in and out of a garage. I don’t know how interesting it is, but I found it thrilling. I took it around its full circle, Louis Blanc back to Louis Blanc, which took about 15 minutes.

Line 7 Bis route, and me getting on the train!

Next underground adventure was the Sewer Museum! They talked about both sewage and stormwater runoff. The sewage portion was certainly stinky, but it was very cool to see what goes on beneath the city that not as well presented as the Metro. What I found most interesting was that to keep sediment from hardening on the bottom of the sewers, they roll these wooden balls through the channel that just barely don’t touch the ground. That forces the water through at high pressure and puts the sediment back into suspension.

Tuesday night was Fête de la Musique (Music Festival), which takes place on the longest day of the year, and when people play their music through seemingly all the streets of Paris. The metros stay open all night, and the streets are packed. I got tickets to the biggest “must go” concert—the Philharmonie de Paris concert under the Louvre Pyramid! They did a hell of a job playing Bruckner’s 9th Symphony. We were able to see the sunset thorough the pyramid. Unfortunately, we all had to sit on the ground, but I very much enjoyed it anyways!

We also went to the Catacombs today! It’s where they put the bones of millions of Parisians as development of the “city under the city” began. They had plaques telling us about what diseased and broken bones look like, and Aryanna, who’d taken a human archaeology class, told us about how to determine age, gender, and basic race of a skull based on its features. Very cool stuff.

Sewer Museum, Louvre Concert, and Catacombs

Paris on the Streets

Most obvious here is Peter and my 18-hour near-marathon through the city. Nothing too new here, but here’s an incomplete list of what we hit: Sacré Cœur, Moulin Rouge, Pompidou Center, City Hall, Notre Dame, Pantheon, Marie Curie Museum, Louvre and nearby Tuileries Garden, walk around the Seine, dinner by the mall, Arc de Triomphe and Eiffel Tower. The next day, we cleaned up a few things we’d missed, including the D’Orsay, Luxembourg Gardens, and the Jewish Quarter. He said it was a top 10 day of his life, so glad I could make it happen! I had the best time as well!

The rest of the Fête de la Musique Tuesday was also a lot of fun. As I said, the streets were packed, and the path along the Seine was filled with kids enjoying the endless music. We spent about four hours after the Louvre concert there. What an exciting night!

Top Left: Trocéado Fountains, Top Right: Music Festival by the Seine at Night, Bottom: Music Festival in the evening

See y'all later for my last blog in Paris :( But for now, I should study for my exams…