Franco-Hibernian Relations

Ryanair flew us to Brussels Charleroi on Easter Sunday. We rented a microscopic Citroen diesel and headed up the right side of the luxurious Belgian auto-route to Brussels. Paul swore that he knew the city well from his time there a half a lifetime ago, but all the streets seemed to have been rearranged since then. After using a some Franglish and international sign language with several local merchants, we found Rue Tenbosch by lunch time. Our old friend Jim Bell met us with open arms, a selection of fromage, and his standard rapid-fire Anglo-Belgian wit. We celebrated Easter at an outdoor brasserie on the Grand Place – James with a Merlot, Paul and Sue with Belgian lambic kriek biers, and the boys with giant parfaits. On the way back to Chateau Bell, Theo chased pigeons while Sam decided that Brussels, of all places, was his favorite city.

Monday morning we set off to Paris for a couple of days. Now France is a fine and beautiful country and it's largely populated by nice, reasonable, helpful people. Except for Paris. Paris is a fantastic city with great food, stunning beauty, and tremendous history. The flip side is that it’s also full of Parisians, and there is one thing you should never forget about Parisians. They don’t like you. They don’t even like each other. Furthermore, they are likely to express their disposition toward you through a number of insolent forms of communication. Every time Paul visits Paris, his love-hate relationship with the city grows more intense.

Alas, the Melchiors were undaunted by these shrugging French, and each member of our clan had a primary objective for Paris. Sue and Sam wanted to go up the Eiffel Tower; Theo was desperate to visit the catacombs; and Paul wanted only to test his driving mettle by entering and surviving the infamous l’Etoile a la Arch du Triumph on the Champs Elysees. Paul’s wish came true first, and he piloted the grossly underpowered Citroen through the intertwining ropes of fevered traffic at l’Etoile roundabout and its twelve exits without a dent! After parking near the Hotel des Invalides, we entered the one hour queue for the Eiffel Tower elevator. Sue and the boys were ecstatic at the vistas from the second platform. Meanwhile, Paul – who can barely tolerate the second level of a shopping mall – strayed nary a meter from the elevator doors.

After not falling to our deaths, we motored across town to the Denfert-Rochereau neighborhood. Over a small metal door on a earthen embankment in the center of the roundabout is a sign that reads ‘Catacomb’. We entered, paid, and descended about 100 feet down an ancient limestone spiral staircase. At the bottom, we entered a tunnel that meandered through the rock for a quarter mile under the Paris streets. When it finally opened up at a chambered junction, we saw that each of the dozens ‘tributary’ tunnels leading away from us was lined with human bones.

Actually, the ‘lining’ was about six feet thick and five feet high on either side of every passage way. Neatly stacked and staggered layers of femurs, humeri, tibias, fibulas, and ribs were interspersed with an occasional decorative row of skulls. We were allowed only on one specific route through this labyrinth of catacombs, which took us through nearly a kilometer of such caverns. Over six million sets of human remains exist in this Paris ossuary, each one a Parisian life lived long ago in an amazing city. Theo was enthralled, Sam and Sue fascinated, and Paul left wondering whether any of the dead had ever been helpful to a tourist, but happy that none of them were currently rude.

After a quick stop at the Paris Hard Rock Café for a tee-shirt for Guitarzan, we turned on the AC (which cut the French car’s power by another 30%) and fought the rush hour traffic out of the city to the east.