I packed my head lamp, some extra clothes, some kindish breakfast, a bottle of wine, energy bars and made myself ready. Me and Lukas started going to take the metro against the station where we would meet, Paris Ivry.

When everyone had gathered and were radio, we went to our entrance and went down!

We walked for a while, and not far from the start, we had to crawl a bit. We did a pretty easy tour, so this was the only part where you had to crawl!

Sometimes the roof could be at least 2.5-3 metres up, sometimes you would have to go more or less crouching and sometimes it was just perfect.

After a while we had our first small break, just talking and getting some history lessons.

We then continued, and after some time we arrived at some big halls. Apparently they had a 500 hundred person party down here some time!

Here, we had a longer break, and opened a bottle of wine to share.

Of course you can’t be without a small dance party, and a dance party it was. I really liked the setting, with all the candles!

Also, we did some exploring around the area, and went up by the stairs where we met those welded-shut metal doors.


On the way to our next place, there was this little room you could crawl into. We managed to squeeze all of us into it and also got a picture, even though it was really tiny!

Our next stop was the “main room”, where there were really good benches and a good table. We ate our breakfasts, and I also got to study the maps le Cigale had made!

I went out in the passages to pee, and also tried turning my head lamp of. I could not see anything, I could not hear anything. I really had to manage my thoughts to not get scared, as even though the others were just 50 metres away, I could not hear anything of them!
Also, I gotta admit I love my travel speaker, which now also has been down in the catacombs!

After that, we had another walk, as we were going to our next, and last, room. I have no pictures of that, as we turned all the lights out and just stayed quiet. You could hear the metro though, but otherwise, it really is pitch black down there!

Then, it was time to get up. I measured the height from the bottom, and we were a total of 20 metres beneath the street when we climbed up!



We went up by 0730, and emerged by Place d’Italy. We had been down for around 7 hours. It was light outside, and all the noises came back again. We just hang out in the park for some time, taking it easy, and talking about the experience.
The temperature down there had been 17-19 degrees all the time. I had some scratches, and we were really dirty, but it was something I would really like to do again!


