Sacre Coeur Basilica, Paris

Date of visit: 15th August 2009
Where: Sacre Coeur Basilica, Paris

Be prepared for the hundreds of steps. If you are very unfit and its the middle of summer you may struggle to see everything or it may take you a while but it is well worth it and I would say a must see if you’re in Paris.

Sacre Coeur sits at the top of a hill in the northern side of zone 1 in the Montmarte area of Paris and I think offers some of the best views of Paris and I think it holds more interest than most of the other attractions. I’m not a religious person in the slightest, so I only speak from the point of view of its setting, architecture and contents. Its location is much more interesting than say around Notre Dame, du Louvre or the Eiffel Tower. There are many winding streets and small shops to find so you can easily escape the tourist masses.

Sacre Coeur Basilica, Paris

The Paris Catacombs

Date of visit: 13th August 2009
Where: Paris, France
More info: http://www.catacombes-de-paris.fr/

Be prepared for the horrors of the Paris catacombs: they close at 4pm, they have a 2 hour queue to get in and if you’re last in then you get herded out by the staff. If you can survive the queue and the 2 hour lesson in self restraint of having to remain polite while having to listen to tragic trendies (sun glasses in the dark catacombs!) and Americans inanely yak on then this is worth a visit. No offense to the American populace but some of your accents seem to carry really well both in the outdoors and the underground passages.

Anyway, it’s just before 2pm and we arrive from the nearest Metro stop which is Denfert Rochereau (either on line 4 or 6) in zone 1. You can see the entrance/ ticket hut for the catacombs as soon as you walk out pretty much. Oh and you can also see the long queue quite easily that snakes around the block for which we find its end and join, at that point we are then advised that they will close in 2 hours and the queue is also 2 hours long by the staff.

The Paris Catacombs