This is the continuation of our trip to Paris with my little sister Sarah the week before Christmas...
Monday, December 21st
Monday was supposed to be our last day in Paris, so we wanted to squeeze in as much as possible. Since we'd skipped it the day before, Sarah and I got up early and headed over to the Eiffel Tower, while Jenna returned to the Orangerie to make the most of her museum pass and see those water lilies one more time. We had to wait out in the cold for about 30 minutes before they opened, but it was worth it since we were able to get on the first elevator up. Unfortunately, since it had been so cold and snowy in Paris for the last few days, they had the very top of the tower closed because it was apparently covered in ice and snow. We did get pretty good views from the middle level, though, and to be honest the wind was so cold at that level we were kinda glad we didn't go all the way up, where I'm sure it would have been twice as bad.
After finishing up at the Tower we met Jenna and headed for Montmartre. This is the artsy district sitting at the top of the largest hill overlooking Paris. This is also where the Moulin Rouge and other burlesque houses are, but we avoided that area based on Jenna and I's experience last time around. (We had walked by the Moulin Rouge to see it but if you've seen a photograph that is pretty much all there is to see in person, so not really worth navigating the streets.) We headed straight to the Sacre Couer, which is the large church that sits at the top of the hill. It was much clearer here than when we came last year, so we got some great views of the city. Inside the church was very nice as well. They didn't "allow" pictures, but we tried to sneak a couple.
Next we headed toward the artsy section, where we stopped for lunch at an amazing creperie before perusing the art shops and work by the street artists. It was a really nice area to just walk around - with guys doing 5-minute portraits that were really high quality, and just people all over. Jenna found a painting that she wanted when we were in Paris last year but ended up not getting it because it was a little pricey and we thought we might find something similar a little cheaper, so this time she definitely wanted to splurge and get a painting. So we went back to the same shop and she found something she really liked and it ended up coming home with us. Sarah also ended up with some art from one of the small local galleries.
By the time we finished here it was mid afternoon. Our train back home wasn't until late evening, so we had a little more time to kill, although we'd seen pretty much every site on our list. We decided that we would go to one of the big Parisian department stores and see what that was all about, since it was suggested by our GEP friend Joanne that lives in Paris. We went to the Layfayette, which is one of the main stores right in the center of the city. It was cool, but to be honest it wasn't much different than if you went to Macy's four days before Christmas - you couldn't hardly move for all the people! We had a nice stop over for tea before checking out the 5-story Christmas tree and poking around in the toy shop.
After finishing up at the mall, it was about time to head back, so we made our way to the hotel, planning to pick up our bags and a quick to-go dinner before heading to the train station. While the porter was grabbing the bags, I decided to make a quick restroom stop. Good thing I did. Jenna and Sarah sat down in the lobby to wait, and when I came back Jenna was looking at the paper and said, "I think you better look at this".
Luckily the hotel carried an international (ie English) newspaper and left it on a table in the lobby. And even more luckily Jenna, while sitting there, happened to notice the front page headline that said something like "Thousands still face travel nightmare as Eurostar train service still disrupted". If you remember from the last post, I said that we were lucky to get to Paris because of a snowstorm and tunnel problems that we didn't know about. Here is the whole story (in brief):
Sometime on Friday morning, just after we made it through the tunnel under the English Channel and into Paris, the snow in that area started to really pick up and it got pretty cold (whereas it had been relatively warm in the past few weeks). Since the cold came on so suddenly, the tunnel itself was warm but outside was freezing, which caused condensation to form on trains as they entered the tunnel. This ended up affecting the electrical systems and the trains' safety features shut them down. I think in total something like 4-5 trains ended up getting stuck in the tunnel on Friday (some people were stuck on their trains in the tunnel for up to 6 hours - so we were really fortunate to get through).
They cancelled all train service the rest of Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Apparently this was all over the news, but we were too busy enjoying the city to notice. They had started running a few test trains on Monday evening, but of course the closure had left a backup of some 100,000 people that needed to travel. We spent the next hour or so trying to figure out what to do, on the phone with the Eurostar folks. In the end, we found out that the earliest we could even hope to travel was Wednesday morning, but that Eurostar would pay for our lodging and reasonable expenses (meals and transportation) for the time we were stuck.
Although this was a pretty big inconvenience and Jenna and I had to call and cancel ourselves at work for the next 2 days, I think it turned out great. For one, we didn't get stuck in the tunnel!! Secondly, we didn't know about it until the last minute, so we were able to enjoy our vacation without worrying about the trip home (something I would have been worried about all weekend). Third, Jenna did find out before we trekked to the train station, where we would have been disappointed. Fourth, we got a free extra day in Paris. Lastly, Eurostar ended up really taking good care of us: free hotel and meals for from Monday evening until Wednesday morning when we finally left; they refunded the affected leg of our trip; and lastly they gave us another free round trip back to Paris, which is going to allow us to see Normandy and Giverny for free later this Spring!
Tuesday, December 22nd
We started Tuesday trying to verify our travel situation, which is when we realized we'd probably be able to catch a train Wednesday morning.
Since we'd seen all of the sites on our list, we moved onto the secondary list. First on that was the catacombs. Yes, creepy catacombs. These were slightly outside the city center. Apparently several hundred years ago the city was full of too many graves, and there were some sanitary and city planning issues, so they decided to moved the bodies out into an abandoned quarry. It was pretty weird - basically an underground maze of decoratively stacked bones. Not much else to say than that. Weirdest part though...as you leave they have to search your bag. For "souvenirs". And they have to perform this check because, believe it or not, people try to steal the bones and take them home. Creepy. 
After a (free) lunch we punctuated the creepiness of the day by heading over to the Pere Lachaise Cemetery. This is the resting place of about 70,000, including Jim Morrison, Oscar Wilde, and a few other celebrities. Coming here was a big mistake. It was mostly Sarah's idea, so I blame her. Basically it was a pain to get to, a huge jumbled mess that was impossible to navigate, and when we got to the interesting graves, it turns out that they weren't even interesting.
After the cemetery there wasn't really anything else for us to do, so Jenna and I decided to go back to the Monet Museum that she had loved so much. Sarah was totally done with being drug through museums, so she stayed back. This was a small museum but, of course, full of Monet masterpieces so it was well worth it. After taking in our last impressionist paintings of the weekend, we strolled back to the hotel, hot chocolate in hand, making sure to pass by the Eiffel Tower one last time before heading off to dinner and an early bedtime.
Wednesday, December 23rd
We were told that trains out on Wednesday would be first come, first served, with the doors opening at 6:00. We had visions of spending the day at the station, so in order to make sure we made it out (to get back for The Nutcracker that evening) I decided to head off to be at the front of the line, leaving the hotel at 4:00 am. Turns out there was no need to hurry, which made me really happy that I got up so early. I had time to grab a cup of tea next door and read for a while and still be first in line at 5:15. We were really surprised at how efficient and well run the whole process was. They had nice organized lines based on what day your original ticket was from. They brought around free coffee and pastries for everyone who was standing in the line, and then had a table with free cokes and breakfast food after you got our ticket checked. We ended up getting on the first train back to London and had assigned seats and everything, so in all it was much less of a hassle than we had expected. It was a pretty crazy last couple of days, but the trip was amazing and everything really ended up working out in our favor.
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