Our Real Life Velma (Cathy) takes a look at the Paris Show Well, I watched today's episode of WNSD. (2/19/2005) Having lived in Paris (and being a French teach, on top of that) I was prepared to rip it apart as inaccurate and overly stylized. I was, however, pleasantly surprised by the accuracy of the drawings. Apart from Fred's horrendous French, (which grated my ears) the main nitpick involved the placement of the buildings around Notre Dame.
The episode showed several large, "skyscraper" type buildings
surrounding the Cathedral. In Paris, the only buildings surrounding As for the gargoyles, they serve a functional purpose--they
are water drains. There was also a tiny reference to the Hunchback The Paris Sewers--yes, they are a major tourist attraction. In their current state they date from Napoleon II's reconstruction of Paris during the 1860's. Before 1860, the city had a very poor sewer disposal system (think the river) and as the population grew, the old sewer system could no longer handle the burden placed on it by the burgeoning population. Napoleon II and his Chief Prefect Baron Haussmann redesigned the system to take advantage of an underground river running through the city, the Seine river and its smaller tributary the "Bievre" River. The sewers do drain into the Seine, but not the way the episode depicted it. If you saw the movie "Phantom of the Opera," then you know about the underground river. I have not yet visited the sewers--every time I go, they are closed or I conveniently forget to go. :)
The Eiffel Tower was accurately represented, including its elevator
system which looks exactly as it did in the movie. Its placement Few more things--the Sacre Coeur was the dome shaped cathedral shown in the beginning of the episode, and the Musee d'Orsay--the gang passes it while driving through the city. |