The Catacombs of Paris

We booked a walking tour of the catacombs of Paris.  It was a Viator "skip the line" tour, which was fortuitous, as the line-up was a block long by the time we arrived.  Here we are waiting for our tour guide to show up:

The start of the tour was 103 circular steps underneath the streets of Paris.  The cool air was nice, as it was 31 degrees in Paris today.  The catacombs were actually a limestone quarry that was mined to build the buildings in Paris.  In fact, the quarry was over-mined and Paris started collapsing in places.  In 1786 a decision was made to relocate the dead bodies from the over-crowded cemeteries to the abandoned quarries [see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catacombs_of_Paris]

There was an interesting part of the quarry that we went through before we reached the catacomb.  A quarryman that was working off a prison sentence decided to carve sculptures in the limestone.  Here are a few photos:

You could not use a flash in the catacomb, so the quality of our photos were pretty poor.  Here is a video of us entering the catacombs:

Here are a few photos that we took when the lights were shining on the bones:

It was pretty incredible. but the kids got a little tired and claustrophobic after 2 hours underground.   We surfaced, bought groceries and had a picnic in a nearby park.