Paris, France Day One.

We made it to Paris! We found extremely good flight deals a couple of months ago and booked tickets to Paris on a whim (thanks Scott Keyes!) We arrived this morning, dropped our bags off at our little airbnb, then explored for the rest of the day. It is bitter cold here, but that isn't stopping us from having fun! Our first stop was the Catacombs in Paris. We waited in line for about 3 hours, but it was well worth the wait:

^^These former limestone quarries were turned into catacombs in the late 18th century due to health concerns of the cemeteries on normal ground level. Over 6 million people we re-buried down here. After climbing down 130 steps (20 meters underground) and walking down several long corridors, the bones appear out of nowhere. ^^

^^Tate was joking that even the catacombs are romantic in Paris. A bit disturbing, but this was our favorite 'skull formation' we found.^^

We took so many pictures underground but most of them turned out blurry because of the poor lighting. All over there are entrance signs leading to different rooms saying "Stop, this is death's empire!" and "Blessed is he who keeps ever in sight the hour of his death and is always ready to die". It was a mysterious and exciting experience to say the least and I can say I've ever seen anything like this. But we learned a lot about the history of Paris and I now understand why there are literally thousands of people who visit these catacombs every month.

Tomorrow it might be snowing in Paris (eep!) so we're going to explore museums and eat food all day. My kind of vacation!