There are many nicknames for Paris ; La Ville-Lumière, The City of Love, Paname, but the one which I was most surprised about is La Paris Gruyère. Gruyère is a type of French cheese that has holes in it. Paris is named after this cheese because it too has holes throughout the city. The Métro, the sewers, the catacombs make up the tunnels that burrow all around the city.
Le Métro
Having lived in Paris for near to seven weeks now I have had many experiences on the metro to both male me love and hate it. It is in dispute as to whether the Paris Métro is better or worse than the London Underground, personally I think it is. The trains on the metro are squarer than those of their London relatives this means that I can stand up straight even when I am right next to the doors! I know isn’t life marvelous!
Depending on what line you are on the underground is air conditioned is a God send on hot summer days! Also the seats are often wide enough to actual sit on without being on top of the person next to you.
On line 1, which is the line which goes parallel to the Champs D’Elysée from Saint Paul all the way to La Défense, there is no driver at the front which means you can see right out the front of the train like a roller coaster! I was sooo excited when I first saw this.
La Mairie de Paris auditions and allows only the best to play here. There is a fantastic String Ensemble who play at Chatêlet. There are also unofficial buskers who actually go on the metro who aren’t actually supposed to be there. However, I quite enjoy these and they often make a journey more enjoyable. There is this Michael Jackson impersonator who I have seen on the trains a few times. His dancing on a moving train is more than impressive. Unfortunately I never understand how these people make a living because I rarely see anyone give them any money.
On the otherhand, the older trains on the metro can be small with very uncomfortable seats and certainly no air conditioning. There are often very strange people on the Métro as we found out in April when we saw a man with a cat in a sock in his hood! Bizarre!
But all in all the metro is a very good service and I have barely had a probably with it since arriving.
Les Catacombes
This is the attraction I have queued for most out of everything since arriving in Paris. I went the day I dropped Dad of at the station and went directly there at about midday. Stupidly had forgotten any water or food and ended up queueing for a total of two hours, because there is a restriction on the number of people allowed down there at once. This is probably for the best, because some of the places I've visited have been so jam packed that you really can't enjoy them as much because you feel like your just being herded like cattle.
The catacombs are 2 km long and the temperature drops to 14C down there! Maybe it's because I had gone delirious from the lack of food and water, but I found it incredibly interesting. There was lots of information provided for you along the route about how the tunnels were first made for limestone quarrying when Paris was a lot smaller, then as Paris grew over the top of tunnels they were forgotten about until they started to collapse behind buildings. It was then that they blessed the tunnels and started moving the bones from the overcrowded cemeteries of Paris down there making the largest underground ossuary in the world. The bone lined tunnels seem to go on for ages, so much that it almost didn't feel as if they were real. It is fantastically creepy and I felt like I was entering the Court of Miracles from Hunch Back of Notre Dame.
Les Egouts
So the last and final chapter of this holey post is les egouts, the sewers! Yeah it doesn't sound all that appealing, but I was thoroughly recommended it by my trustworthy former French Assistant, Pauline. So when my mother came to visit instead of going to Monet's house and gardens, which are a little way outside of Paris, we decided to go here instead. Now in my imagination I had conjured up this experience where we got to go down the sewers in a boat or something, but now it is quite a small exhibition with a lot of not very interesting information about how the sewers were developed to deal with the growing population of Paris. The most interesting thing was imagining Jean Valjean dragging Marius through them. Apart from that it was just smell and damp and I don't really recommend it. I don't even have any pictures of it. Sorry Pauline!
That sums up why Paris is sometimes referred to as gruyère, because under the surface there are lots of holes.
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