Dem bones...

Thursday was our final day in the city of lights. It was Aidan’s day to plan and he mastered the art of the metro quite well. On the Paris metro, you need to know not just which line number and color you need, but also which direction to go toward. As most of our metro trips involved several changes, there was much to navigate. He got us to the catacombs with (relative) ease.
The catacomb entrance had a line (naturally) so we settled in using hand-held Yahtzee and the Herald Tribune to entertain ourselves. Naturally, there were stairs involved to get to the catacombs. (“If there was a stair, ‘yo, we climbed it…”) We were happy that the tunnels were lit up: a hundred years ago you had to hold candles to light the way. Yuck. The catacombs were very cool (literally) and a big hit with the kids. Once you got used to the piles of bones, they became less creepy. We did our best to model good tourist behavior – sadly, our fellow Americans in the catacombs were not so inclined. Loud and obnoxious they were…
After the tour and more stairs up to street level, we wandered across the street (and out of the rain) to a café for lunch – where we had a bit more luck with the menu and ordering. We happened to sit next to a lovely American family from Riverside, CA who we started chatting with part way through the meals. We had some things in common (AYSO, school issues, former jobs for Navy contractors) and since they had been in Paris for almost 3 weeks, they gave us some helpful hints on our ice-cream search near Notre Dame cathedral. So we exchanged business cards and parted ways. {Which reminds me… do you really need to be in business to carry business cards? I think I might have some made up for myself. Kind of a retro throw-back to the calling card days. They would be ever so helpful in just these kind of situations. I’m sure mine would have some kind of coffee cup motif. I’ll look into it…)
So off back again to Notre Dame (a bit of a full circle to the trip: beginnings and endings as it were) We were sidetracked by a summer storm and ducked into a souvenir shop to do the obvious shopping with the added benefit of escaping the rain. Edwin sat dutifully on the front step, watching over the umbrellas and just taking a rest. The shop-owners, noticing his extreme cuteness and feeling very sorry that he was sitting by his lonesome, kept trying to usher him further in the store. He replied that he was fine sitting out of the rain, literally under the rack of T-shirts. This garnered much sympathy from the male owner who would every so often give Ed a small toy from the multiple bins of toys on display. Edwin racked up quite a haul while we shopped for T-shirts. He walked away with what looked like half the store in his little hands.
We found the famous Berthillion ice cream, and ate it under awnings out of the rain. Luckily, the rain drove away most of the tourists briefly, so we didn’t have to wait in line. We hiked back to the carpark and made our way S.L.O.W.L.Y. out of Paris. We arrived in Frieburg after midnight and checked into a lovely large Novotel hotel.