Bones and stuff: Madrid, Spain

Quite honestly, I'm surprised how good of an experience Paris was. Many of the Euro travelers I've met along the way have given me constant horror stories of a complicated city, full of extremely rude residents, and hyper expensive food. Navigation for me has been a breeze (learned the subway as well), as many of the interesting landmarks are within 1-2km of each other. Most (English speaking) Parisians I’ve talked to have been very friendly, polite, and helpful. It’s always “bonjour” this and “merci beaucoup” that. Everyone is very stylish (nobody wears anything but black and gray here), smell of perfume, and the streets are packed with vendors selling wine, cheese and French bread.

On Saturday, I again made an early bird attempt to seek out the Louvre interior. Unfortunately for me, the train station for my “small” town of Reims sits on a low priority track. Due to some "incident," I had to take a transfer to nearby Epernay, where I would be forced to wait almost two hours. I arrived in Paris way to late for the Louvre experience, so I again decided to delay that particular event, and took in some other outdoor sights (due to great weather).
Considering the time of day, Notre Dame would be open. I ran over and got in yet another super long line, but not from the back this time. I hate waiting in line, absolutely hate it. Queues where I can't engage in other activities while I wait make me angry. Lines like that make me feel as if the time was completely and utterly wasted away (especially when I’m by myself). Given my cloak and dagger activity from the previous night, I felt like putting my skills to the test once more. Waiting near the front doors of the Cathedral, and making it look as if I was taking pictures (which I was anyway), I waited until all the other tourists craned their necks back for their own picture taking pleasure. At that moment I simply (without even lowering my camera) weaseled myself next to a group of people my age, thus lowering the chance anyone would notice. Not only did it work like a charm, I also saved myself a good 30 minutes of valuable Paris time.
To quote one of my many heroes:
“Don’t discourage the boy Marge, weaseling out of things (or in my case, into things) is what separates us from the animals… except the weasel.”
Inside the Notre Dame, it was unfortunately (and predictably) crowded, but even with all the loudmouthed people strutting about (people were almost yelling), the Dame had a humbling and powerful aura. Similar to the Reichstag, I knew some of the history going in, which always helps in adding an extra layer of importance to the experience. It's hard to put into words exactly what I felt, but the whole building just bled history, character, and age, leaving me with a feeling of near insignificance.

Another landmark visited that day was the "Place du Pantheon." It was fun trying to find the place too. I completely ignored my map and local street signs. I just kind of walked in the general direction of what I thought was the right direction, until I came across a city block sized building. It didn’t take long for me to find said massive structure peeking through the city skyline. When the French thought up the design for this particular structure, the architect must have just taken a piece of paper, and in massive, block sized letters wrote “huge everything” one hundred times in a row. Trust me, it shows. The inner décor of the Pantheon was entirely made up of large paintings, large sculptures, large pillars, and large monuments. In the dead center, set up on the floor, there was a (large) golden ball attached to a (large) wire, which came down from the highest point (also large) on the main (large) dome. It’s a (large) scale model of Foucault’s Pendulum, which worked perfectly in telling time, based on the earth’s (large) orbit I believe.
Underneath the Pantheon was a series of crypts, which I explored with great haste. Sadly, these particular crypts were clean, non-dank, and very well lit (can you even call such a thing a crypt?). Many famous Parisians were/are buried here, but the only ones that I recognized (or able to locate) were Voltaire, and Victor-Hugo.

The crypts of the Pantheon were a big let down (but the building itself rocked), so I decided play the trump card, and pay a visit to the Catacombs.
Wow.
I had first thought this place would be a cheesy hallway filled with old and faded pictures, accompanied by boring, poorly composed banners, and boy was I wrong (only the entrance room was like that, haha). After descending about 100ish spiraling stairs down into the ground (stairs down? Woo hoo!), you walk through a super small quarry tunnel, and after about 15 minutes of getting lost in the dark, you arrive at the burial grounds.
Bones, bones, bones, bones, and more bones.
This is what the Pantheon crypts should have been. The Catacombs were dark, dank (the air was moist, and water dripped from the ceiling), and smelled of decomposition (I’m going to assume that’s what the smell was). It was unreal how many bones were down here. They were stacked row upon row, for 1.6km of winding, twisting tunnels, and 99% of the bones were either skulls, or femurs. I’m not sure where the rest of the remains went, but I assume there is just no public access to those areas (probably quite messy). I walked by many a skull and thought to myself “this used to be a person, that used to be their brain, eyes, nose, flesh.”
When I die, I want my body put into a capsule and blasted into the void of space. That way I can spook some alien race some day, or perhaps fly into a black hole. Wouldn’t matter to me at all! Har har!

Being the first Sunday of the month, every museum in Paris had free admission. After finishing with the Catacombs I decided to spend the rest of daytime hours at the Louvre. I was quite amused to just walk in with absolutely no line up at all. The place was packed, but with no tickets to restrict/slow access, everyone could simply walk in. There was only 90 minutes until closing, so I grabbed a map, turned my camera to "spam mode," and hunted down the Mona Lisa, Venus de Milo, and most importantly (to me anyway), the Winged Victory of Samothrace. The Louvre is massive (see: Pantheon massive X10), and I still plan to revisit it for a whole day. What I saw that afternoon was one floor, of one single wing. There are four main floors, and dozens of wings. OY!

To wind up the evening I visited the Place de la Bastile monument, and went home “early” again so that I could visit the Louvre in the morning. Sadly, here I am in Madrid (I had reservations here, and couldn't stay in Paris any longer) with the Louvre undiscovered (to an acceptable point). I’ll hopefully have a half day stop in Paris on my way back from Barcelona to Switzerland/Austria/Italy. I saw all the mega-attractions at the louvre though, so that should hold me till I complete January's agenda.

p.s. I finished uploading the rest of my pictures, up until Dec 31st, and have added captions to them as well. The slide show you are accustomed to clicking for my Picasa page will no longer have new pictures added. It will remain on the site, but due to a cap on how many pictures each album can hold, it seemed like a good time to start a fresh one for the new year. So, the old one will be 2008, and the new one will be 2009. Simple like pie! When you are on my Picasa page, you can flip bewtween albums there using the interface, so there is no need to move back and forth between my blog and Picasa, if you wish to view the different albums.

Kyle-“well, we’re boned”-out