Page 31 - Contrast2015

Even though we’ve only spent a few days all together,
we’ve become fast friends, and we amuse each other with our
antics and stories about the day. Our day, which isn’t even
over, has been so jam-packed with activities that my mind has
to really work to inventory everything we’ve done in the past
12 hours. All of the day’s events already seem like they
happened ages ago.

The morning began with taking the metro to the
Catacombs of Paris, and after losing Kieran and recovering
him at the next stop on the metro line, we successfully
arrived, waited in line for a little while, and then made our
descent underground, swapping out subway trains for
dismembered skeletons. I was more at ease than I was
intimidated by all the skulls and bones, and I took my time
following the path of the caverns, playing around with my
camera to see what it could do and what I could make it do.
(The results were not bad.)

Back above ground, our next stop was to Shakespeare and
Company, an English-language bookstore, where my fellow
English majors and I paid tribute to our favorite ex-pats
Hemingway and Fitzgerald by taking stealthy selfies next to
their illustrated likenesses on the walls of the store’s stairwell.
Several of us had to be pried away from the bookstore, so we
could go to lunch, and after eating, we went to the nearby
Notre Dame, where we narrowly missed the last of the day’s
guided tours. However, touring the famed cathedral, complete
with majestic stained glass windows and adorned with
amusing statues of religious figures was enough for most of
the group and gave us enough time to board the metro to the
Sacré-Coeur in hopes of watching the sun set.

⁂

Eventually, we make it to the ticket counter, almost as one
unit—some of the line cutters have turned a few members of
our large group into a smaller, satellite group. We then wait

| 29