12/17/11 to 12/22/11 – Paris – France
Crew – John Orta, Gigi Orta, Lily Orta
You know I really thought the whole “Six million bodies worth of bones underneath the city” claim was hyperbole. I was quite wrong.
Not that I could really ruminate about this newfound knowledge because I was sprinting after my mother who dislikes the following: tight spaces, dead bodies, and tight spaces surrounded by dead bodies.
But I can get to how I ended up underneath Paris surrounded by dead bodies later on. Let’s cover the basic details: We traveled to Paris after spending one night in London and planned to head back to London after a little under a week in Paris. We were staying at a quaint Parisian hotel in the center of the city and it was the first time Lily or I traveled to a country that didn’t have English as its primary language. Oh, and it was snowing.
The snow was the bane of walking tours and sightseeing if I was not the child of two parents looking to show us as much as possible. So just assume everything was done while cold.
First, we hit all the required locations:
Like the Louvre. It lives up to the hype. It also was massive. It took us eight hours just to see half of one wing (there are three) and even then, the amount of attention we paid to each exhibit was equivalent to what a Mafia pays to its victims while doing a drive-by shooting. We ran by countless works of priceless art and barely glanced at them. Not like we did not care (or well I didn’t at the time), but the entire place is overwhelming. Every painting in the museum has such a rich backstory and has helped shape the world of art. And absolutely no one in my family is qualified to talk about art. Thousands of art history majors have spent their lives working on or studying the art in the Louvre and we had three hours.
Lady Liberty? Has a surprisingly intriguing backstory of revolution and social upheaval behind it. Coronation of Napoleon? Massive and narcissistic. Mona Lisa? Fantastic. The guide with us helped explain why it’s such a highly regarded painting with eyes that move towards you and changing facial expressions based on your perspective. The entire museum buzzed about it, signs pointing towards the Mona Lisa could be found in every exhibit. The painting’s fame was exaggerated to its current worldwide prestige by the media around its kidnapping in the early 20th century. But the skill is there. It’s also protected by bulletproof glass. It was actually used when a woman angry about her green card being denied threw a coffee at the painting. I doubt her immigration appeal was not accepted after that outburst.
We saw a WW1 museum. Their WW2 museums were unsurprisingly lacking but they had real-sized trenches dug underneath the floors of the museums where they had outfits from the Great War. France might be the butt end of too many jokes but they have won the most wars of any still-standing nation. Gas masks, trench spikes, and shells were on display. There are still parts of France that are unsafe to farm due to unexploded ordinance or residue from the gas weapons used in the war.
Third, the Eiffel tower, but the elevator was down at the time meaning stairs were the only way up. It was still snowing, late at night and the higher you climbed the windier it got. I also have quite a fear of heights, so not for me. Each story of the tower had a different café or shop or viewpoint that you could look down on the city from. Few cities have had their nickname age as poorly as Paris. “The city of Lights” looks like any other major city now, if anything the number of lights pale in comparison to the armies of LED lights that make up the skyscrapers of Hong Kong or Tokyo.
Of course, I really did not see that much of it because I sure as Hell was not looking down any more than I needed to. The construction of it the monument was brilliant, however. Each steel strut bent inward to maximize strength, so the force of gravity forced it onto the other strut and likewise with the main pillar rising out of it. It has had no major stability issues in over 150 years, is beautiful and for a quick fair attraction (meaning it went from design to finished in under a decade) it has become Paris’s iconic symbol. If anything, it was prettier in the snow.
Going off that much of Paris’s appeal comes from its urban design, but the history behind it might be more interesting. One of my classes this semester on urban design had a class on Paris specifically. It was the first major European city to receive the infrastructure required for a modern city. Napoleon the III (the nephew of The Napoleon) saw medieval pipelines and sanitation cracking under the stress of a rapidly growing population. The population of France doubled in the 18th century alone which might have been the largest cause of the French Revolution. Either way, he hired a man named George-Eugene Haussmann, appointed him “Prefect of the Seine” and while pointing to the city said, “Fix this”. So, Haussmann like any good urban designer went at it without worrying about what he just got himself into.
He widened Paris’s roads as much as possible, created a new sewer system and water distribution system in the city, added fire codes, and established the first modern city planning committee to oversee continued construction in the city. This was all funded by taxes from people entering the city.
The result was a fully functioning capital city so well equipped for the modern era that it has been used almost the same to this day. Cafes are on the bottom floors and people live on the upper ones in each apartment building. The schools that he set up the funding for operating to this day. Even the richer folks living on the bottom floors because it requires fewer stairs to get up is still a trend today. This might’ve been helped by the fact that the elevators might’ve been the slowest on the planet if our hotel was a good sample size.
I know the food of France is cultured and exquisite, but I was far too young for it and I’m a vegan who prefers Asian food (even if wasn’t at that time). I am far from the best person to judge that. The hot chocolate and pastries in the city though were unparalleled to ten-year-old me. Even if just because they melted chocolate added a few drops of milk and then served it to you. You pair that with a warm unhealthy croissant and a cute café and what can I say it slaps?
Now onto the less common activities:
Starting off strong with a two-hour walking tour of the French Revolution, in the snow! Lily and I complained about going on this trip as I thought we had the right to. I hate to say it though, but it did have its moments. We got to go inside the coffee shop where the revolutionaries planned the tennis court oath, the hotel that King Louis XIV and Marie Antoinette were held hostage in, and the square where the guillotine once stood. That does not mean it wasn’t cold as Hell though.
There even were dents in the street at the location where Napoleon (just an army captain at this point) had ordered cannons loaded with whatever could be found to be used as grapeshot to scatter angry peasant rioters. Turns out being showered in rusty nails does little damage but shatters morale. Quick thinking like this would lead Napoleon to be promoted to general and eventually one of the acting heads of the French governments. When he was asked to step down, in an action all too common in human history, he refused. The rest is some acid trip of Russia in the winter, a prison escape, and a revolution that still no one knows for certain if it succeeded.
But oh yes let’s talk about the catacombs and what the hell they are doing underneath the city of Paris. In the 18th century, the cemeteries of Paris were becoming overcrowded. These days every century we often just dig up forgotten bones and throw them out, but they didn’t due to religion or a lack of public service in those days. However, in 1774, three separate graveyards had walls collapse spilling bones into the streets or nearby shops. The city was forced to react to this and commissioned the catacombs.
Envisioned to store all the bones in the city, it was an expansive underground maze of areas that bodies would be piled and then left. It could store millions of bodies and that was necessary. With somewhere between six and seven million bodies going into the catacombs they were for then all intents and purposes forgotten.
But wait if Bridgerton has taught me anything it’s that nobility loves the truly most decadent things. And what could be better than a private classical concert or ball held within the catacombs of your ancestors? The higher echelons of the French Society certainly loved this idea and implemented it. But these bones were unsorted and messy because well they were shoveled in. After all, graveyards were overflowing. So the nobility hired folks to come in and set it up much like how to set up a charcuterie board. Soon afterward it became a tourist attraction that led to me sprinting through these caves. My mother and I eventually emerged and she was unamused by the whole ideal. It should also be noted that in 45 minutes we saw maybe three other people in these tunnels. To take our mind off it, there was a gift shop at the exit! (As any good tourist attraction should have). Everything was bone-themed and the bone erasers and magnets were pretty cute.
(If anything is wondering about the saner members of my family: Aka my sister and my father they were enjoying the stroll and taking plenty of photos. It took them nearly twice as long to emerge as my mother and me which is a compliment to their ability to sit with those bones for so long. They also made fun of the “Sorte” signs in the tunnels that showed the fastest evacuation route and how 30 minutes into the walk they were still pointing towards the entrance)
Another fun architecture note about Paris is that these catacombs limit how many skyscrapers can be built in the center of the city. The corridors and overall lack of strength from a few layers of mostly hollow bones hurt the support base of any skyscraper so they mostly stay out of the city proper.
Hoards of art, a catacomb system, a worldwide attraction built for the goddamn fair, and one of the more complicated historical figures. One would assume that this country is a mess. That is true.
France has 17 constitutions in the last two centuries. It has fluctuated between the most influential revolution in the Western Hemisphere to military dictatorships to the ruler of most of Europe to a place known for losing wars and art. Sure Paris is overbuilt and at times a little bit snobby. My sister who should be writing this article due to her actually knowing French and understanding their people much better assures me that their dislike of foreigners isn’t aimed at the United States. The people in France dislike everyone they are not friends with, their culture prioritizes close friendships and family. France has protests and riots constantly over nearly anything. There is no letting the government off the hook.
With that said, France is currently the country I am most likely to live in if not the United States after college. The government made the statement (after hosting the Paris Climate Agreement) of 100% renewable energy by 2035. That is leagues more ambitious than the United States.
Let us break it down. 70% of the country was green, to begin with as France is percentage-wise the larger user of nuclear energy in the world. Zero accidents and no reliance on German coal, a paranoia kept over from the 20th century. France is blessed with windy beaches and an abundance of sun perfect for clean energy. The country is also hiring every clean energy specialist they can locate.
Which means me 😊.
I mean sure France is not known for its engineering might…. But maybe it should? The country has produced a startling number of innovations and casually has remained at the forefront of research worldwide. Regardless they are handing out citizenships and not even requiring engineers to learn French. Hang out in France, make the world a better place, and get EU citizenship? Find me a better deal and we can talk.
The infrastructure note does provide me a good Segway to the end of our trip, however. To leave the country we planned to take the Eurostar under the English Channel from Paris to London. It’s such a short hop that for many it’s a commute. But as I mentioned it snowed. And France can deal with snow, they often have it and build ways to keep their essential transportation running. Britain on the other hand had no such measures.
This was not midwestern snow, it was not falling in feet at a time and the temperature never even went negative. But the entire system froze, and all tickets were canceled. You could however wait in line for a ticket and so we went to see if we could score a ticket. Lily and I still had Nintendo DS’s which we casually played in line while my parents checked the news. The perks of traveling so much even at the age we were was that none of us *actually* were worried. The worst-case was we get stuck in Paris another night and after that (when the hotel could not keep us any longer) we would find an awful hostel.
Lo and behold two hours and multiple baguettes later no tickets so we headed home while complaining about three inches of snow crippling trade between the continent and the British isles better than even Brexit.
We were truly in a horrible position. Stuck in a nice Parisian hotel with fires and biscuits while using the internet to play more Mario Kart. I personally didn’t see the rush to leave.
This was especially humorous because Paris is the center of France. All major roads lead to Paris and it is the economic, political, and social hub of the country. Part of why this city has so much chaotic energy is because so many major French events happened in this one city. I even had to cut my section on the revolution of 1848 and the three-pope schism of the middle ages. Yet we couldn’t get out of the country despite the entire country being built to transport people to and from this city.
The parentals found us a flight, however, and three planes were leading the next night. We picked the one in the middle for no real reason. It had the worst odds of flying because an early or a late snowstorm would cancel the flight. Somehow though that was the only one not canceled and we landed in London not any worse for wear. And Christmas was in a week!
Sam’s Sermon Scales:
West Oakland BART similarities? – 9/10. Romance and sunsets and beautiful sites. Sure, the streets could’ve been cleaner but who cares when there are cute shops on every corner and people work so they spend more on their family. The overall happiness of the city is unlike anything I have seen in the United States.
“I could make this better!” – 9/10. No idea what their coffee tastes like, but their hot chocolate slapped even if it alone had like 1200 calories in it.
Folks of Culture? – 10/10. Its Paris. The Louvre is without a doubt the most expansive art museum I have ever visited by an order of magnitude. They have it all: Food, art, violent and complicated revolutions, sports!
Golden Hour Opportunities? – 9/10. The city of (non-LED) lights lived up to its promises! Flowers and architecture and there was a reason that so many cities today were modeled off this single city. Even the Louvre’s glass ceiling was beautiful from below. Every part of the city had value, there was no such urban decay that you would expect in a major city
Did the vegetarian starve? – N/A. I wasn’t a vegetarian yet! Actually not even close to one. Their pastries were amazing, however.
“Hey boss, can I work more hours?” – 5/10. Too young to comment on this topic but I highly doubt we went to a single location where we were not ripped off. Everyone we interacted with was incredibly nice (to me at least) so I would like to dispel that stereotype, but Paris is just too big of a tourist city not to know how to take advantage of us
Cooler than Middle Earth? – 6/10. This category Paris suffers on. At the end of the day, so many places and things try to act Parisian that there is no surprise to seeing the original. Sure, the city might have pioneered it all, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t seen it in a hundred other places.
Much like my Netherlands article I really wish I hadn’t spent the entire trip in one city and wouldn’t be forced to review the entire country based on that. According to my sister, English fluency and prices drop rapidly when you leave the center of government and it has its own completely different charm. Yet, if all goes well, I will be back after college.
Photo credit goes to my parents
Best,
Sam
Dead Man Travelling 