Wandering about Paris

For the past couple of days we've mostly wandered about Paris.

(Friday) We took the metro to the Sacré Coeur (Sacred Heart) and climbed the 300 steps to the viewpoint in the dome.  (The cathedral is already on the top of a hill - the highest point in Paris - so we had already climbed 300 steps even before we entered the church!)

Here is Sonya trolling an influencer with Sacré Coeur in the background.

And here are some views from the dome.

Note both the Eiffel Tower and the Finger dominating the view.

Afterwards, lunch!  This is a few blocks from the throngs of tourists around the Sacré Coeur.

We did a bunch of walking and shopping in the afternoon, and we had dinner in the courtyard of the famous Odeon theatre.

The next day (Saturday) we started with a walking tour of our very own neighbourhood.  Who knew it was so famous!  In fact this was our very first view of Paris, emerging from the metro at the Vavin station (our apartment is on Rue Vavin) last Wednesday.  Le Dôme Café and  La Rotonde are very famous cafe's in the history of Paris art and intellectualism, frequented by artists, writers and philosophers too numerous to mention.

We visited the Square Yves Klein, dedicated to Yves Klein who apparently invented the colour Blue.

The Fontaine des Quatre-Parties-du-Monde in the Jardin des Grands-Explorateurs (near the Luxemburg Gardens).

We visited the Church of Saint Sulpice, which starred in The Da Vinci Code, so now we have to watch the movie.

Inside it's quite spectacular, possibly one of my favourite churches.

In the afternoon I visited the catacombs, and Sonya went shoe shopping.

The catacombs were originally limestone quarries under the city - the limestone was used to build the buildings of Paris.  Back in the day it was a free-for-all, and no one really knew the extent of the mines.  Once they started collapsing the King ordered an inquest and they filled in the quarries, leaving most of the tunnels.  The tour started with a fairly length walk through these tunnels, about 20 metres underground.

When the cemeteries in Paris started to become a health hazard (beer would spoil in 20 minutes in the proximity of a cemetery) they were empties of bodies and the bones moved to the catacombs.  Over 6 million bodies were moved, and the bones stacked in the tunnels.

One the way home we walked through the Montparnasse Cemetery - guess that is dominating the skyline!