Day 8 & 9

Paris is slowing down for me. Or rather, I'm slowing down on Paris. I've seen what I want and I'm ready for La Rochelle. Normandy is first, and I really can't complain, because it is so beautiful, and I get to sit on a bus and read my books, but the schools from Richmond are joining us for that, and they sort of invade our space.

Yesterday we went to Eparnay in Champagne to visit a ... champagnerie? Anyway, its called Castellane, and they give us a great tour of the process of making champagne. Which isn't much different than the process for sparkling wine, but we seemed to wander into the right neighborhood for champagne itself. ;)

We took a regular train out there, and picnic-ed in a park and met some very friendly provincial ducks. We picnic a lot, which keeps food costs down cuz we're eating sandwiches n things. I has some frites (french fries) and a sandwich called a croque madame, which is a rendition of a croque monsieur, which is a grilled ham and cheese sandwich kind of. Mine had a sunny side up egg on it, which is what distinguished the two. There are eggs on many strange-ish things here...like pizza. Its really good though.

Ok so then we went to the ballet, which was terribly disappointing, and I'm glad I'm blogging about it now rather than last night, cuz I would been quite a grump. The ballet was nice, kind of a provincial theme here too; a peasant girl frolicked around with the village to back her up. But our seats were horrible. Noone sat together, and everyone had folding seats in an isle behind a pillar, or the wings so far up and over that the stage is completely out of view. I cannot believe they sell those seats. They weren't even the cheapest ones. Dr Janc did NOT tell us they were obstructed view seats. Lesson learned about that though, NEVER AGAIN. I am considering trying to find tickets to an opera when we return through Paris.
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Ok and today was Verseilles. Which is so enormous, I can't even begin to describe. It was very cold and windy and rainy though, so that really afflicted the visit. The sun came out a bit as we were released into the gardens. They are also unbelievably huge, and are kind of a labyrinth. I eventually split from the group and had a really nice walk around, and then took the train back to town by myself. Which is so easy. The metro system in Paris is extremely user friendly, and we've been trucking around enough that I almost felt like I fit in today.

But my reason for bolting was really that I wanted to go to the Catacombes, and I did. And they reminded me of the maze at Verseille, except in ancient tunnels beneath Paris, and instead of shrubbery, there were bones. For a MILE. There are hundreds of miles of quarries beneath Paris, which have been used for a variety of purposes throughout the centuries, including aqueducts, war shelter, even sneaking around in Les Miserables. But anyway, at one point in the 18th century, many of the cemetaries in Paris were disposing of bodies unsanitarily and some crypts broke, and there were some problems. So the city decided to move everybody in several graveyards into the catacombs. And I'm not positive, but it looks to me like there are millions of peoples' remains. It was the creepiest place I have ever been in my entire life.