New Years!

Our very last day of 2010 was spent looking at bones in the Catacombs underneath the city of Paris. Sounds kind of morbid but had it not been for huge lines the day before we would have seen it then. It wasn't a bad way to spend the day, it was actually quite interesting. To have a detailed read about what it's about head over to wikipedia to have a look. In short it's a series of underground tunnels filled with bones of exhumed remains from overcrowded Parisian cemeteries. We waited in the line again for a couple of hours while we took it in turns to run to the nearest cafe to get something to warm us up from the cold. We purchased our tickets and for us youngins who are under 26 got in for a discounted price and then walked down the windy steps to the underground tunnels. It took a while for us to get to where the bones actually were and it was fun trying to scare our travelling buddies around the dark, dreary corners as the anticipation built for when we got to see the bones. I think we scared other unsuspecting people more than we scared our friends which was also highly amusing.

Walking through the maze of bones was really quite interesting but towards the end I was walking quite quickly because it all looked very similar and there was water dripping from the ceiling which added to the creepy factor. The girls exited promptly leaving the boys to walk through at their intrigued leisure and we waited for them in the warmth of the gift shop. When the boys finally surfaced we headed for the nearest metro so we could go to the craziest department store I've ever been in (besides Harrod's which was just as crazy). I'm talking about Galeries Lafayette. It was giant, overcrowded and overpriced and as soon as we'd eaten lunch and bought some tasty Pierre Hermé macarons I was keen to get out of there. Just getting out of there was a mammoth effort because the escalators were poorly designed which caused huge congestion whilst trying to get back down to ground level. I don't have much patience for people in not so crowded shopping centres so I quickly lost my patience amongst this crowd. Like Harrod's, visiting Galeries Lafayette once was enough for me.

That afternoon we headed back to the hotel for a bit of a relax after a busy day before we were to head out again to join in the New Years Eve celebrations. We crowded into one of the rooms for a few drinks and a chat before we headed out for a quick dinner (I didn't intend for a pun but we actually had dinner at a fast food joint called "Quick" - HA!). We jumped on the metro (which was free for New Years) and went to the Louvre to see if we could get a decent view of the Eiffel Tower.

Our monster from Nepal and India came to visit us in Paris!

We couldn't get much of a view of the tower from the Louvre since it was so foggy so we once again jumped on the metro and went somewhere for a closer look - the Paris Military School. We were pretty happy with this spot but it was a little too cold to hang around for an hour until midnight so we ducked into the nearest cafe/bar/restaurant for a bit of warmth and a drink. We took our last sips of our last drinks of 2010 and walked out into the cold to secure a good spot to watch the tower. By this time the crowds had gotten bigger and there were more groups of rowdy, drunken people waiting for the same thing that we were waiting for. Mitch set up his camera ready to get some spectacular shots when the clock struck midnight. The anticipation was building, the people were unsettled and others were preparing their champagne bottles for the big bang. A group nearby to us started counting backwards from ten and popped their corks when they finished the count but it was a little premature. An embarrassed guy blamed his iPhone for the premature count down and the rest of us looked at our watches and saw the second hand ticking to twelve. There was no official countdown but once the majority around us had decided that it was midnight, everyone celebrated, many were kissing and a few groups of people let off some small fireworks. We waited patiently for the tower to erupt but all we saw was the usual light twinkle that it did at every hour in the night. There was no spectacular fireworks display off the tower at midnight. We watched and waited until the lights stopped twinkling and still nothing happened. We waited some more but soon we decided that perhaps there wasn't going to be anything firing off the tower. Like the rest of the crowd we started the walk towards the metro. We dodged crowds of drunken revelers, stray firecrackers and broken champagne bottles and watched the metro station fill with crowds. We weren't really feeling like standing shoulder to shoulder with smelly, drunken people to get on the train so we waited until the crowd subsided a little before we caught the train back to the hotel.

Even though we were slightly disappointed with the lack of pyrotechnics on the tower, we still had a great time in Paris. It was a fun atmosphere and quite funny that there was no fireworks like we expected. We overheard other people in the crowds talking about the lack of fireworks too. I guess we shouldn't have assumed or expected it because we set ourselves up for disappointment. Where to for next New Years?