Day 9 Death, Dancing & Tombs

After a night of Some African guy outside chanting all night the herd of elephants on the floor above us and some female screaming and another guy yelling woke up rather tired. The four of us set of to the Catacombs. The catacombs under Paris were originally dug by the Romans for their limestone to create buildings and statues. Once the Roman empire collapsed Paris was built on the diggings. Eventually in 1774 buildings started to collapse  and major engineering work was needed to stop future collapses. It is still required today. In 1780 a house wall collapsed and fill up with bodies from an a joining cemetery. Urgent need was required to stop this catastrophe happening all over Paris from the massive amount of cemeteries all through Paris. So they decided to remove all 6 million bodies and dump them in the catacombs. In 1809 Louis-Étienne Héricart de Thury built the macabre walls of bones you see today.

Sharon and Katie had to leave earlier than Jason and myself to get to Lido on time and left us to keep wandering through the Catacombs.
After leaving the catacombs Jason was desperate for a toilet, Paris is no better than London when looking for relief. No wonder you can smell urine a lot in Paris. So much for a romantic city. We found a nice café on some random corner with a toilet. Bought ourselves a beer sat outside and watched curiously how they park in very small places. The spot a women was trying to park her small car was not much larger than her car maybe 300mm. She parallel parked, tried to push the car behind her backwards with her little car. The other car was a Range Rover and her car just wasn't heavy enough to move it out of the way. The car in the front had the hand brake on because it was at the front near an intersection. So after trying to push the rear car backwards and the front car forwards she gave up. Very entertaining anyway. After this we headed for the French Military museum.

Another very impressive building and houses artefacts of war prior to Napoleon days during Napoleon and after. Going through the years I did not realise how much the French controlled parts of Europe and other parts of the world. Jason and I then went to have a look at Napoleons crypt at Les Invalides. Very impressive structure but ran out of time to explore it was 5.00pm and closing.

Sharon & Katie's Day
 
We got to the Lido with about 15 min to spare...no wonder they say to arrive 30 min earlier than your ticket time...we had a lunch bus of oldies in front of us....finally we starting moving in.
We had to check our coats....then get our tickets and escorted to our very own booth dead centre of the stage....1/2 bottle of champagne for me and 1/2 bottle red wine for Katie.  4 course lunch followed over the next hour and 20 min.  At 1.30 the show started.
There was singing, dancing, boobies left right and centre and plenty of very shaved and buff young men.  we were also Entertained by a mime and a comedienne who were so very good....laughed so hard!!  Horse doing dressage, ice skating and a guy doing pole dancing but with ribbons of material suspended from the ceiling.  This was all in 2 1/2 hours.....left there at 5ish to go back and change our shoes and get some warmer clothes so as to be able to handle the trip up the top of the Eiffel tower later that evening. 
Met Evan and Jason at the Galleries LaFayette , this was the most swankiest place I've been to...so many well known shops and labels. It must be so nice to just see something you want whip out the credit card and bam its yours!!  We were thoroughly depressed after 1/2 hour that we messaged Jason and Evan to say we had had enough....( shock Horror, Can't believe it myself) Katie did buy a candy cane charm from Pandora ( the one she wanted (snowflake) sold out in a week) I bought some new perfume J'adore.....the most I've ever spent on perfume but its Parfum not the watered down stuff!!

So we met Evan and Jason outside of the Galleries and they mentioned that they found a great little street for dinner. So off we trot down the street and around the corner. Bam! There was about a hundred people crammed into this tiny little street. Ha, of course, a theatre just ended. We pushed through the crowds to the restaurant that Evan wanted to go to. Surprisingly empty regardless of how many people were outside.

It was unanimously decided that this was the best place that we have been so far. Sharon and Jason had toastie sandwiches. Madam for Jason (had egg) and Mister for Sharon. Evan went a Chicken Burger and I decided on the Chilli Con Carne. All very nice! We also found a French beer that the three of us could agree was pretty good (Sharon doesn't drink beer). We also had THE BEST hot chocolate. Real Chocolate with cream on top! YUM!!!!

After dinner off we go to the Eifel Tower. On the way to the train the trippiest thing happened. There were these grates in the pavement. Generally they are all black and you don't worry about walking over it. I stepped on this grate and as I was walking over, there was a light. So I looked down and sucked in a gasping breath. It went down at least 3 floors beneath my feet! Then that made Sharon look down..."Get off, Evan!!!" We were headed to the La Madeleine Church that Jason and Evan found that was all lit up with changing coloured and search lights.

After that little side trip we finally made it to the Eifel Tower. Waited about an hour in the line before making it up to the elevator. The rickety elevator went up, Jason and I weren't too sure that it was going to make it up, but it did. Second level, what a view! It's about level to what we were the other day at the Cathedral in Montmarte. We were doing okay with the cold, seemed quite calm. A few happy snaps (taking ones of us and then getting stopped by others to take theirs) and off to the next level.

 

Third level, not so bad. enclosed then up to the open area. Huh, a bit colder but okay........then we walked around to the other side of the tower-HOLY CRAP!!!!

Cold, wind strong enough to bowl you over if your not careful, and cold! Although it is a good view (Second level better). Couple more happy snaps and we all retreated back into the covered in area.

After roughly an hour we decided to head back. Down the elevator and then to the next, wait another half an hour and down we go.

We all retreated back to the little apartment at 12.30am and pretty much off to sleep for a big tomorrow!!!