http://homepage.mac.com/peint/zone-tour/index.htm http://membres.lycos.fr/houze/ or http://infiltration.org/resources-france.html
Miles of passages snake underneath Paris, following surface streets
or just randomly twisting at the whim of
the builders. The actual quarries from which Paris was built are mostly
backfilled, leaving these inspection
galleries behind. If the quarries had not been filled, much of underground
Paris would be hollow. Despite
blockages made by the government and efforts to seal off the quarries
from other tunnel networks, there
is still a huge amount of space beneath the city that can be explored.
Local explorers are called "Cataphiles"
and some spend days underground exploring, mapping, or just partying.
Various rooms and former quarry caverns feature artwork, strange "installations",
carvings, or odd artifacts.
Some of the artwork and carvings down here are outstanding.
A former brewery of Capuchin monks, and a Cataphile smoke-bomb party.
Some of the bone rooms. This annoying small passage was our introduction
to the real catacombs.
More passages, and varrying depths of water. The locals wear hip boots,
but for an Alaskan this water is warm :-D
It seems a Tintin fan has been here.
Jim's dodgy crashout and an example of Catacomb wildlife. We had to
explain Furries and Plushies to him ;-)
An abandoned 1960s Nuclear bunker. The bikes that ran auxillary power
and aircon still worked, but I failed
to wire up a lightbulb to one of them (probably DC motors and AC lights)
Other tunnels include an extensive network of telephone galleries (some
of the catacombs were once used for utility lines, but these
are being removed now). There are also some very well-designed sewers,
but they're a bit smelly and subject to brown trout attacks.
Supposedly there are also various utility tunnels for the city, a seperate
network of subway utility tunnels, abandoned subway lines,
and other tunnels. Cataphiles tend not to explore the active systems,
so most are unmapped.
You can't keep a Cave Clanner from her beer!
Emerging from the underground, and a fully trashed hotel room.
A suburban quarry with some nice architectural features and abandoned
mushroom farms.
Our cataphile guides seemed quite concerned that we wanted to explore
on our own ("Le Tourists!").
Once we had assured them of our competence, we were gifted with a bottle
of Sake (double standard? :-) )
Jim let me do the mapping while he explored the Sake, which led to
some intersting antics when we discovered
the happytime funslide and underground bike stash.