after spending our first couple days of our eurotrip in london, leeds, and the rest of the UK, we spent the earlier part of one of our days in paris wandering the abandoned railroad, La Petite Centiure on our own looking for our way into the catacombs.
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We had found an entrance and decided to wander down. since our guide we planned to meet had bailed on us, we didn't go very far in fear of getting lost on our first trip.
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we popped out about an hour later after snagging a few shots and planned to try and find another guide.
while walking back we met a young man sitting on a former train platform smoking a J. he told us that he'd been exploring them for about 4-5 months and certainly wasnt an expert on them, but still offered to be our guide. he told us to come back about 10pm that night and meet him in the same spot.
in the meantime, we decided to take a tour of the actual catacomb museum which only costed us 4 euro each and wound up being the coolest museum ever. all the people down there made it difficult to get all the photographs i wanted but still amazing nonetheless.
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shortly after we got lunch and sat and decided weather we should trust this random dude we met on some abandoned railroad tracks. turned out we couldnt afford to be picky since our original guide had bailed and none of us felt comfortable going in there without one. after spending that day doing touristy stuff to kill time, we realized our phones were still set to UK time and had to rush back to the spot we met him at. emailing him and apologizing the whole way.
we had all our gear packed, ready to set into the catacombs. he had brought a lady friend with him who entered with us. we felt pretty comfortable once we entered. the woman was leading the way, with the guy, who i'll call MX, for now, staying behind us, to ensure we wouldnt get lost. neither spoke english very well. but enough for basic communication.
we walked for what seem like a mile or so through tunnels, some flooded, some we had to crouch. some walls we had to hop, crawl over until we made it to our first room.
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some of the water was dyed crazy colors.
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we got a chance to sit, light some candles i actually had time to set up a tripod and snap some photos. shortly after another group of explorers happened to wander into the same room. we all talked and hungout for a bit. one spoke nearly perfect english and basically served as our translater for the rest of the night. our guides weren't photographers so we didnt have a lot of time to stop and take every photo i wanted to.
next we stopped in a room that has some pretty amazing sculptures in a room that must have taken years to complete. some of them were so tiny and detailed it was hard to snag a good shot. the parisian who was pretty good at english told us about the artist but i cant remember the name for the life of me.
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next, we climbed through a hole in the wall to the cinema room. one of my favorite spots we saw.
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doing some planning..
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an otherwise awesome mosaic that was vandalized.
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notre dame mural
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next stop was a WWII bunker. not sure if it was the nazi one, or the french resistance.
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next, after crawling through very small spaces and crawling on our stomachs for a long time we reached the biggest room we've seen so far. but not after running into some folks leaving the area after partying. one of which had a boombox over his shoulder we could hear before we got there.
this room was really interesting because of the chandeliers, the fake vines around an old rusty pipe and the red velvet wall that had a candle lit glowing skull inside it. very phantom of the opera feel.
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one of our members kept dozing off. since it was about 8am at this point..
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last stop was the memorial/apparent grave site of dr. Philibert Aspairt. a cataphile that had gotten lost and died in the catacombs. although the guides seemed to have doubted his existence and think it was an urban legend.
after crawling through a series of extremely small holes, small enough to make someone who's not that claustrophobic feel uneasy. we then had to go up hundreds of steps until finally reaching a ladder and popping out of a manhole at 8am.
we immediately dispersed and went about our ways.
while people were walking to work in their clean dress shirts, we popped out looking like this.
made it back to a hotel without any stares or dirty looks, minus the construction workers right around the corner from our exit.
all in all one of the coolest experiences of my life, turns out you meet the nicest people by abandoned railroad tracks..
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