DAY 1 
CATACOMBS

This is the rather unassuming entrance to the catacombs. No big signs or anything. If you weren't looking for it, you'd walk right past it.
Unfortunately there were many steps I had to go down to enter the passageways beneath the city. Ow! Ow! Ow!
There are a few little offshoots from the public passageways that are lit in yellow light. They make for good spooky photos.
Markers can be found throughout the catacombs marking this thing or that. Some name the passages. This one does.
Ooh, scary!
The Ossuary of Denfert-Rochereaux. It is at this point you enter the section where, well you'll see.
I don't really know much French, but I do know this says something about this being the empire of the dead.
I think this explains about the creation of the catacombs as being a place for the burial of...
...THESE! Bones, millions of bones!
The people who moved the remains down here were creative at times. They put these skulls in the form of a cross.
I knocked on some of the bones. The hollow skulls sound like coconuts.
This says something in French.
At least when they emptied the cemeteries above and put the bones below, they indicated from which place they came and when they were moved. These came from the St. Etienne Cemetery in May 1787.
I don't know Latin either, but another website translated the alter to say "There Man, like a flower of the field, flourishes while the breath is in him, and does not remain nor know longer his own place."
This is my favorite photo of the bunch.
There's a long passageway out.
This used to be an old quarry before they started stacking bones in it. Because of all the mining, the ceilings became fairly unsafe. Many of them were fortified with cement and arch structures like this.
This is the rather unassuming exit to the catacombs. It is a bit of a distance from the entrance.

TO THE LOUVRE