Paris Walking Tour

Beau had the day off work so we planned to do some walking and see more of the city. We went out for breakfast in the morning, then watched a little of the Disc Golf World Championships that are on now in Vermont.

Just after 11, we took the tram and metro into Paris. Our first target was a craft beer place called La Binouze. We marveled at the amazing selection of hundreds of fine beers from all over. On draft they even had one of our favorites, King Sue DDH by Toppling Goliath. We both went with new-to-us hazies and enjoyed sipping fine beer watching Paris outside.

Fortified, we headed down to a restaurant for lunch, another great meal. Life seems so good here!

Then we had a longer walk to “downtown” – we walked toward the Louvre, and stopped in a park to just relax and enjoy the day. Then along the Seine, quite a way. Lots of people were out enjoying but it was never crowded. We stopped for a round of foosball at a free foosball place under a bridge – the US should have these.

We kept going, headed for Coulee Verte Rene Dumont, a promenade made by converting an old, elevated railway. What an amazing concept – thanks Tom Holub for the recommendation. It was nice walking along, but soon, it was time to head off to the Catacombs, where we had a reservation for 5:45.

It was another hour walk there. When the time came, we walked down a spiral staircase, over 100 steps down, into the famous catacombs. We walked through sort of dark and moist passageways, seemingly forever, listening to the audio guide. Centuries ago, they quarried limestone from here to build the big buildings and monuments of Paris. Then they starting having collapses, some disastrous. Someone got the idea of making a macabre display of centuries worth of bones from the cemeteries. We started walking through these galleries, and were blown away. The photos you’ve seen just show one small area, lots of carefully arranged skulls and leg bones. And piles of random bones. But until you walk through it all you have no idea of the scale. It is wild.

I don’t know how far we walked underground, but we came up another 110 stair staircase quite some distance from where we went down. From there it was a short walk over to a restaurant where we had a 7:30 reservation with my Paris Dakar (and Andes Trail) room mate, Andrew. We all wanted an authentic French dining experience and L’Assiette did not disappoint. Some of the reviews said they were snooty to non-French speakers but our waiter and sommelier were both super friendly and really wanted to make sure we had a great dinner. Their famous signature dish is Cassoulet, a stew of white beans and meat. Beau ordered it and when it came, it was comically large, so large he couldn’t quite finish it in the end. Andrew and I had fish dishes, very elegant and tasty, but normal size. We had escargot and some mackerel for appetizers and a fine Bordeaux.

It was over 2 hours of fun, a great evening out and a chance for Beau to get to know Andrew a bit. We walked 3 more km to the tram, then headed home. I crashed immediately as it was 11:30pm and we had been on the go for over 12 hours. No more jetlag though!