Paris Trip with Lucy
April, 2014
Monday April 14, 2014
Woke up early to catch a 9:42 am bullet train to Paris. This was somewhat of an impulse trip, since Isabella, Susan, and Grandma flew to Morocco for 2 weeks, so we figured we could treat ourselves to a few days in Paris. Christopher had to stay home and study.
We were fortunate to have sunny weather every day.
Following our arrival after the 3 hour train ride, Lucy and I walked from the Gare de Lyon to our hotel, the Hotel Voltaire République in the 11th arrondissement near the Place de la République.
(Hôtel Voltaire République, 10, boulevard Voltaire 75011), dropped off our luggage, then walked around Paris until the evening. We passed the place where the Bastille used to stand, but had been replaced by a memorial to the victims of a later revolution (1830).
We walked through the Louvre, which Lucy says she thinks she might remember (she was last her in 2009 when she was 4). Every now and then her face will light up and she will say, "Oh, yeah! I remember this!" She got very excited when she first saw the Eiffel Tower again and made me promise we would visit it the next day.
We ate a very late lunch, early dinner at a brasserie (Brasserie Les Deux Palais) across from the Palais du Justice where Marie Antoinette was tried and the Conciergerie where she spent her last days.
Then we crossed the bridge to St. Louis Isle where we ate ice cream at the St. Michelle Café.
Lucy was getting a little tired after all the walking, so we took advantage of their wi-fi to download a game for Lucy on my Kindle Fire (Plants versus Zombies).
As the sun set, we took a leisurely walk back to our hotel along the rue Vieille-du-Temple.
Along the way, we visited memorials to the Shoah including an enormous plaque bearing the names of those declared "Righteous Among Nations" by the government of Israel for helping save three-quarters of Paris's Jewish population from deportation.
We saw a Jewish boy's school with a memorial for those children who did not survive.
Tuesday April 15, 2014
Lucy discovered a little chocolatier near our hotel where we bought a quick breakfast which we ate on a bench in the Place de la République.
On the way, we passed two armed men with body armor and nervous fidgety looks, one of whom unholstered and half withdrew his sidearm, unloading an ATM. Paris is a much safer city than any major American city, but there have been a few highly publicized sophisticated armed robberies especially of jewelry stores I heard about on French radio.
The day was much cooler than the day before; I half regretted telling Lucy not to take anything too hot, but luckily we both had coats. When the sun dips behind a cloud or we sit in the shade, it can be quite cold.
Eiffel Tower
Despite that, we decided to do the Eiffel Tower first. There were French soldiers patrolling with automatic weapons. We waited in line for what seemed to be a couple of hours before ascending to the top. Lucy happily played Plants Versus Zombies and told me she reached a higher level.
It's funny how many Americans and Brits are here; when I asked in French whether a line was for those already with tickets, all I got were blank stares. I repeated the question in English and everyone perked up, smiled, and answered right away (it wasn't).
Plaques gave an overview of the tower's history. It had been built for the 1889 World Exposition - the centennial of the 1789 Revolution - as a temporary exhibit. It was considered so ugly that its creator boasted that he was lucky to have the only office in Paris that didn't have to look at it (it was in the tower itself). It would have been torn down had it not been for the radio; in the 1920s the tower was kept standing to transmit the new wireless technology.
On top, it was colder (but sunny with blue skies and fantastic views of Paris). Lucy liked to watch the cars, buses, and boats 900 feet below (the viewing platform is about 100 feet shy of the tip of the 1,000 foot tower), and the people who looked like insects.
Most people don't realize that the aspects of Paris that are most striking - the sweeping, wide boulevards radiating from geometrically aligned squares and circles - are relatively new, historically-speaking. Haussman, a lawyer by training but engineer by profession, was hired by Napoleon III to demolish huge swaths of historical Paris to create the look that visitors associate with the city.
Lucy wanted to eat in a restaurant in the tower (she had this fixed idea from I don't know where), so we did, at Restaurant 58. We happened to arrive just before a mad rush, which was lucky because we only had to wait about 15 minutes. They would bring you your entire meal at once (Lucy had a menu enfant which included salad and a little chocolate mousse dessert shaped like the Eiffel Tower). There were many Americans who are always so loud, something I never notice or much mind in the States, but find a little jarring after the quiet, reserved Swiss.
After the Eiffel Tower, we walked along the Jardin du Champ-de-Mars to the Invalides and the tomb of Napoleon, something I missed last time I visited. There was a statue of Vauban on the wall, a revolutionary military engineer and strategist we studied quite a bit at West Point.
But the coolest thing of all was that we happened to stumble on a funeral being held in the central courtyard of the Invalides, catching the President of France, Françoise Hollande, in mid-speech, giving a eulogy for Dominique Baudis, a conservative mayor of Toulouse and former journalist.
A policeman hushed us all as we approached and there he was, only a few tens of meters away, the French head of state addressing a crowd and a military contingent standing at attention before a tricolor-draped coffin.
A very fancily dressed woman was crying in front of the barricade separating us from the official proceedings. She said that she had been a friend of Monsieur Baudis, but was denied entry even though she had a letter which she waved in front of me and a nearby gendarme who remained stony faced. I could not tell if she was crying out of grief for Monsieur Baudis or for not being able to get into the circle of VIPs attending his funeral.
After the military escort raised the coffin and marched out of the courtyard with the family following close behind, Lucy and I decided to see some old armor and stuff, which I was surprised that Lucy found very interesting. She loved her audioguide (a lifesaver for visiting museums with kids), trying to find all of the displays she was asked to ("can you find a suit of armor missing a leg and an arm that looks like this?").
They had huge collections of cross bows, instruments that changed history in Crécy in northern France in 1346 against the British during the 100 Years War. The decisive English victory led to Calais being ceded to the Brits, and this was largely thanks to Welsh proficiency with the cross bow.
The cross bow was so effective it had been banned by the Lateran Council of the 11th century except when used against "infidels" but was reintroduced and used throughout Europe - by 1450 there were two archers for every man-at-arms - until it was replaced by firearms in the 16th century.
Gunpowder was first introduced in Europe in the 13th century from China. This mix of saltpeter, charcoal, and sulfur was another game-changer, of course. Crécy was also the first battle where artillery was used. In 1429, in the siege of d'Orléans the French had two "murderers" as they called their massive new killing machines.
She started to wilt a little when we went through the World War II section (I went quickly, since I had visited it slowly a methodically a few years earlier and wasn't interested in getting too depressed again).
A lemonade in the museum cafe helped give her the energy to walk to around the gardens and across the bridge of Alexander III while the sun set and two apparently unrelated Asian newlywed couples were using the stunning backdrop for a series of wedding photographs. 
Lucy kept insisting that we go back to "her street", Avenue Montaigne, a ritzy street off of the Champs Elysée with what appeared to be headquarters for Chanel and Prada, with fancy store fronts and security guards everywhere, so that she could see "her" dress.
Lucy had became enamored of a blue dress in the window of the Dior boutique she saw on the walk over to the Eiffel Tower. Price of said dress: 3,900 Euros (almost $5,500 dollars) not including shoes (which would set you back another $1,000 or so). This price discouraged her a bit, especially when she realized that all the cajoling in the world would not make me buy either dress or shoes.
Her spirits lifted when we reached the Avenue des. Champs Élysées and found that there was a Disney store and it was still open.
The running soundtracks were mostly dubbed in French which seemed wrong for some reason (Tom Hanks just doesn't sound right in French). But all was made right again when they started belting out "Let it go" from the movie Frozen in English and Lucy stopped to listen. Although I'm not personally a big Disney fan, I do think it's astonishing that they are able to produce hit after hit and all the world - even the French who actively resist American culture - eat it up (the store was packed).
We ate a quick, cheap dinner after our fancy Eiffel Tower lunch (total 10 Euros) then took 3 metros back to our hotel.
The funny thing about Parisians giving you help is that they almost never say "je ne sais pas" but always give you enthusiastically detailed directions that are sometimes partially correct. At one intersection, we asked 3 people standing together and each of them gave an entirely different answer at the same time, then started to argue among themselves. I like to use people to confirm what I think I already know, and I have gotten pretty good about identifying locals (they are the ones without the cameras or the overstuffed backpacks, and Parisians generally don't do baseball caps or t-shirts), but nothing beats a good map and a series of well-marked streets. Another disappointing thing I have noticed far beyond Paris is that no one seems to know or reference North, South, East, or West anymore. It's always, "go in the direction of" or "take that street and turn right, then right again" but if you ask someone if this Metro goes north or south, you will get a puzzled look indicating they had never thought about it that way before.
Paris is a happening place and I must admit that after visiting it now for the third time, it is starting to grow on me, rough edges and all. It's particularly enjoyable to navigate it with Lucy who takes delight in using her map and trying to figure out where we are and where we are going (she is often more on target than random Parisiens).
The musicians in the subway stations and sometimes in the cars themselves (although I saw one lady who started singing get rudely stopped and - I think - arrested by security) are quite good. We heard a very impressive violin version of Ave Maria in a Metro tunnel connecting the stations - the acoustics of the walls amplified the sound and made it much more dramatic. People rushed by without applauding when he finished. I did and gave him some money, which I always try to do with musicians (live music is tough and should be appreciated and encouraged).
Paris is much more diverse in every way than Geneva (which is among the most diverse cities in Switzerland) and has much more energy; you frequently think it is earlier than it is because so many people are on the streets and filling the cafes and restaurants. Although it is expensive by French and American standards, it is actually less expensive than Geneva. When Lucy and I got back to our hotel room it was 10 pm but felt like it was only 8 pm or so.
Wednesday April 16, 2014 Versailles
Ate sandwich from last night as breakfast, then took regional train to Versailles, where we waited in a long line despite having bought tickets on line in advance. We met many families from all over the world, including a German man who thought I was Swiss from the way I spoke German, then said it was nice that I was taking my Enkelin (granddaughter) out! The same thing happened in Italy when a man scolded Lucy for not obeying her grandfather.
There was an American connection even here: a plaque commemorated a 1932 generous donation by Rockefeller to renovate the Château.
The impressive golden gates and grills in front of the Château, torn down during the revolution as a sign of absolutism, were re-installed in 2007-2008.
In 1975, they completely restored the Queen's Bedroom.
The 1995 James Ivory film Jefferson in Paris was filmed on location at Versailles, as was Sofia Coppola's 2006 film Marie Antoinette.
Many heads of state visited including JFK in 1961.
The 1987 G7 Summit was held at Versailles.
The chapel in Versailles where the royal family attended mass.
A portrait of Marie Antoinette with her daugther (who was the only one of the three to have survived, traded to Austria; Marie Antoinette was decapitated; her son died of scrofula while an orphan in captivity.)
Adults - jostling for position in what seemed the world's most luxurious subway station - were complaining about the walking and fighting for every available bench or seat but not Lucy! She would lose herself in the crowd just to make me nervous, then reappear, say hi, then disappear again.
View of Versailles gardens from Versailles.
The famous, always crowded, Hall of Mirrors
Lucy was very good, listening attentively and completely to every audio guide presentation and taking copious pictures with her camera.
Marie Antoinette's bed.
A French class with an excellent tour guide who held their attention while they sat on the floor and listened attentively gave a very elucidating description of what happened in every room.
When we broke for lunch at Angelina's restaurant at the first floor of the Pavillion d'Orléans, Versailles (they have a much larger restaurant in Paris), the most expensive place we ate at by far, Lucy ordered a chocolate à l'ancienne ou l'Africain, a cold chocolate drink. "That was addicting," she said after drinking it without pausing. To reduce expenses, I ordered nothing except for a cheese plate, figuring (correctly) I would be able to eat half of Lucy's order of smoked salmon.
We completed the tour of the palace, then went out to the gardens and rented bikes which we rode to Marie Antoinette's Petit Trianon (technically, it was built by Louis XIV, but Marie Antoinette loved it and made it her home away from home, complete with a working farm).
Marie Antoinette portrait at Petit Trion. 
Petit Trion: divan where Marie Antoinette may have lain.
After a tour of the grounds, we took a rowboat out on the Grand Canal Louis XIV built as a "little Venice" (he even hired gondoleers with the gondolas from Venice to add to the ambience).
It was a beautiful, sunny afternoon, so we ordered some ice cream and lingered on the lawn, where people had spread blankets and were picnicking, before making our leisurely walk back through the gardens, court, and charming little town of Versailles (always neglected by tourists rushing through it for the Château) as the sun started to go down to the train station.
Lucy told me at length about her upcoming horse camp and seemed to be in an excellent mood. Realizing it was late and we hadn't eaten, we decided to grab a quick dinner at McDonalds.
Lucy told me at length about her upcoming horse camp and seemed to be in an excellent mood. Realizing it was late and we hadn't eaten, we decided to grab a quick dinner at McDonalds.
From the upper deck of the train, we could see the Paris sky line, including a Statue of Liberty replica all lit up on the Seine.
Lucy took thousands of pictures, so many that the batteries of her camera died.
Thursday 4/17/14 Louvre
I didn't plan to spend the entire day in this massive museum, but Lucy would not leave until we had seen all of the exhibits she wanted to, listening to as many audio guide explanations as possible, including a detailed sweep through the ancient Egyptian section, where she told me all about what she is studying in class (ancient civilizations), the god she had been assigned, and who her god's brothers and sisters were. She lit up as she recognized them in the art work.
I remember the Louvre had quite an impression on me the first time I visited, but this time I tried not to get angry or upset by simply not thinking about the historical reality behind the paintings, but to focus on them as works of art in isolation of the suffering they usually represented.
The obligatory Mona Lisa homage.
We saw an impressive David painting, Napoleon visitant les pestifiérés de Jaffa, a first rate piece of 1804 propaganda showing Napoleon bravely removing his glove to touch the chest of one of his plague-stricken men with his bare hand. Before I had a chance to listen to the audio guide explanation, I explained to Lucy what was going on.
But as we both listened, the truth was far more complicated and ugly. She turned to me and announced, "You were wrong. Napoleon was not helping them - he was poisoning them!" In the actual 1799 Syria campaign, Napoleon first killed 2,000 Syrian prisoners, ordering that they be bayoneted rather than shot in order to save bullets and gunpowder. Afraid the sick and dying soldiers would impede his mobility, Napoleon suggested to Desgenettes, his chief medical officer, that the sick soldiers be euthanized with a lethal dose of opium. Desgenettes refused, but it certainly undercuts the nobility of the painting and shows Napoleon's ruthlessness.
La réalité semble assez loin de cette image mythique : le 23 avril 1799, pendant le siège de Saint-Jean-d'Acre, Bonaparte suggère à Desgenettes, médecin en chef de l'expédition, d'administrer de l'opium aux malades, c'est-à-dire de les euthanasier. Desgenettes refuse.
The audio guide gave a nice overview of the different movements such as Romanticism in the 1830s, presaged by Paris artists as early as 1804, which focused on individual feelings and took great artistic license with historical, geographic, and even anatomical reality, and Neoclassicism, that focused on collective feelings.
Géricault's The Raft of the Medusa was as shocking in 2014 as it was when in 1819,
an over-life-size painting that depicts a moment from the aftermath of the wreck of the French naval frigate Méduse, which ran aground off the coast of today's Mauritania on July 5, 1816. At least 147 people were set adrift on a hurriedly constructed raft; all but 15 died in the 13 days before their rescue, and those who survived endured starvation and dehydration and practiced cannibalism. The event became an international scandal, in part because its cause was widely attributed to the incompetence of the French captain perceived to be acting under the authority of the recently restored French monarchy.
The sail on the horizon was of the boat that would save them.
Delacroix introduced a new form of painting, the literary painting, drawing on and elaborating a scene from literature, in this 1822 case, Dante's inferno. The damned are reaching up desperately to the Barque of Dante as they journey through hell.
One of the most impressive and iconic paintings was Liberty Guiding the People with the famous Marianne who became a symbol for France, leading the people during the July 1830 revolution. The boy shown in the painting was based on a legend of a child revolutionary present at the barricades and likely the inspiration for Victor Hugo's child character in Les Misérables.
The Scène des massacres de Scio also by Delacroix showed an 1822 massacre of Greeks by Turks which was very controversial when shown in 1824 because the French had not yet taken the side of the Greeks in their struggle for freedom from the Ottoman Empire. All of these nationalistic independence movements were proving very unsettling for the French government.
Jean Ingres's Grande Odalisque was another scandalous painting since it apparently was the first to show a nude so prominently without any pretext of a classical setting (naked ancient Greek goddesses were fine, but the same nudity in a modern context was considered shocking). It was also criticized on anatomical inaccuracies, but Ingres was more interested on focusing on and creating an artistic line. Napoleon's sister, married to the King of Naples, commissioned the painting but by the time it was finished, she had fled Naples after her husband, who had come out in favor of her brother during the 100 days of 1815, was executed.
Lucy was getting a little tired of the nudity. "Looking at naked people makes me feel like I need to poop," she said. "I don't know why, it just does."
Girodet's The Entombment of Atala was, as Lucy excitedly informed me, set in America, in Louisiana. A young woman whose mother was a devout Catholic poisoned herself rather than break her vow of chastity with a young man she had fallen in love with.
David's The Oath of the Horatii was another one of those paintings that is much more dramatic when you see it up close. Like so many of David's works, it is HUGE. Considered one of the first works of what would become known as Neoclassicism, it shows 3 sons swearing to their father to fight to the death for their city, a patriotic theme very popular when it was painted.
This was in a section of American paintings.
Lucy loved the section on antiquities.
Before the Battle of Marthon, the Athenian soldiers worshiped at the temple of Héraclès to whom they attributed their subsequent victory over the Persians.
The massacre of the Niobids was a popular recurrent theme in the 5th century BCE; Niobids were children killed by Apollo and Artemis because their mother bragged that she had more children than the gods. More commonly, this theme of mortals being killed for bragging about or appropriating god-like powers was extremely common and would of course inspire later biblical authors.
When we got to the ancient Egyptian section, Lucy's face lit up. "I love Egyptians!" she said. She showed me the Egyptian gods responsible for giving birth to the sun each sunrise, and the other god responsible for its set. Serpents throughout ancient Egyptian art represented royalty (unlike in later Jewish and Christian mythology, when they would represent evil).
Amon was the lord god of 2 earths, lord of heaven, king of all gods, a universal and timeless god worshipped 3,200 years ago.
To punish people, Egyptians would never speak their name, for naming an enemy gave him existence.
A power struggle in Egypt led to invasions by Kush in modern Sudan, leading to centralized rule in the Nile Delta. The Persian domination was such a harsh occupation, that Alexander the Great was greeted as a liberator.
Egyptians believed the sun was swallowed in the evening and born in the morning. The infant sun god was born from a water lili on the earth's first day.
The Egyptians believed that the gods had flesh of gold.
Lucy and I ate in the cafe at the Louvre - she figured out how to read a map of the complex to figure out where a restaurant was - but I stuck to my strategy of waiting did not work because Lucy ate every bite of her main course, forcing me to order one myself!
Lucy was listening so intently and so often to her audio guide, that an alert appeared telling her to return it because the battery was dying.
After a long day at the Louvre, we ate a small snack at a Starbucks in the Louvre, Lucy mailed a Mona Lisa postcard to my parents describing her experience of seeing it, then we took a metro to Sacré Couer.
After walking through Montmarte, we took the funicular up to the church which we toured while a service was in session. I heard a woman shrieking in French to someone else to get out! get out! When I looked over, I saw some modestly dressed, Muslim women who were asking her why she was so angry, apologizing if they disturbed her, but she refused to settle down, pointing toward the exit. It turned out they were Muslim Lebanese Americans from Michigan who were touring churches and mosques throughout Europe. It's ironic that these women worship the same god as the angry Christian, yet she could not tolerate their presence in "her" church, but I worship no god at all and she said nothing to me.
It embarrassed them that the woman behaved that way, but their father cautioned deference, saying they should respect their elders, even if they were behaving rudely.
We saw the scintillating Eiffel Tower in the background. Every hour on the hour for 5 minutes, it lights up in a dazzling display that makes the tower appear to be a giant sparkler.
We ate dinner in a little artistic neighbor near the Sacré Couer where the streets are lined with portraitists wanting to do your picture.
I just ordered 6 escargots and Lucy had a pasta main dish which of course she didn't finish, so I had a full dinner after all.
Lucy loves her book I got her in the Louvre book store on the daughter of King Louis XIV and her time growing up at Tuileries and Versailles, which she read every chance she could. She speaks better French than me but has trouble with some of the words when she reads, especially related to 17th or 18th century royalty, so I can help her with these.
Friday April 18, 2014 Notre Dame
Since we only saw the Louvre the day before and we have a Paris Pass that only makes sense economically if we see about 5 museums today, that is our goal.
Today's plan:
Notre Dame
Conciergerie / Sainte Chapelle
Musée d'Orsay +/- Rodin
Pompidou
But Lucy really, really liked the Louvre, so I have no regrets about spending an entire day there this time. It's hard to zip in and out of museums with Lucy who wants to see and hear everything about every exhibit in every museum.
We went inside where a service was being held, then stood in one of the longest lines this trip waiting to climb the 400+ stairs to the top. This was the first cloudy day, but the sun came out from time to time.
When we reached the top, Lucy counting each step, we had beautiful views of Paris with the sun coming out as we saw the sights we had seen from the ground. People below seemed to be forming a giant question mark as they looped around to line up to get into the church. Lucy is in a very good mood, very happy that she came here, one of her specific requests.
We saw the stained glass windows of Sainte Chapelle, an architectural and artistic marvel when it was built to house what was supposed to be Jesus's crown of thorns (which another visitor said they took out today (it's Good Friday), allowing people to kiss it if they chose (they chose)). It turns out that the relic cost more than the church, whose price was staggering.
We next visited La Conciergerie and the Palais du Justice, where Marie Antoinette was imprisoned, tried, and convicted. She was killed in October, 1793, several months after her husband Louis XIV was himself beheaded.
One of the last sketches of Marie Antoinette.
The names of all 2,780 victims of the Revolution (those killed in the Great Terror in Paris - there were many more throughout the country who died in various and sundry ways) lined the walls, including that of Marie Antoinette.
We saw a mock-up of her cell, including a mannequin in the black mourning dress she would have worn after the death of her husband.
Next, we made our way over the Musée d'Orsay.
We saw Monet's Poppyfields which was quite impressive again (it was my third visit to the museum, Lucy's second). Apparently, the railroad had made it possible for more people to enjoy the countryside.
Manet's Lunch on the Grass caused quite a stir when it was shown in 1863 for its random nudity.
Aristide Maillol's Le Désir was apparently one of many works of art stolen by the Nazis in World War II then later repatriated.
Dina Vierny was apparently his muse.
Tarcisius was pretty impressively life-like when seen up close and in person. According to legend, Tarcisius was a young Christian boy who was confronted by a group of pagans who asked him to show him the sacraments he was carrying. Instead of complying, he swallowed them, making the other boys so mad they beat him to death.
Catholics made him the patron saint of altar boys, and copies of this statue would be given to boys receiving their first communion. "For this statue, the sculptor had a young boy pose nude for a photographer. He added the drapery, as well as the stones at the back, suggesting the boy had been stoned to death."
Rosa Bonheur's Ploughing in Nevers, complete with the spit of the oxen, made you feel you were really in the field, sweating with the beasts.
Head of Jane Poupelet by Lucien Schnegg.
Jules Breton's 1859 Calling in the Gleaners caught a moment when, at the end of harvesting, peasants were permitted to scrounge for grain on the ground (gleaning), taking home as much as they could gather between harvest and sunset. A guard watches over them, telling them it's time to leave. They are each accepting their fate, knowing that what they have gathered might be the difference between getting through the winter or going hungry.
My favorite painting. I can't say why.
After the Musée d'Orsay, we walked along the Seine, did a maze someone had set up, then crossed a pedestrian bridge to the other side, where we took the Metro to the Centre Pompidou.
Centre Pompidou
Pompidou is just fun to say [Pohm-pee-doo], and I always thought it was the name of someone's lover or wife, but was actually the name of a former Prime Minister, then President, of France, who oversaw the construction of the modern art museum.
Lucy loved pictures of the building and had asked repeatedly to go there. When it emerged from around the corner following a long walk from the Metro, her face lit up. We got in with our Paris Passport, then took the glass-enclosed escalator to the rooftop restaurant, where we ate dinner with a spectacular view of Paris and the Eiffel Tower.
Unfortunately, it was growing late and even though some exhibits remained open, we had to zip through them and head back home after a very long day.
Saturday April 19, 2014 Cimetière du Père-Lachaise
Before leaving Paris for a 3 pm train back to Geneva, I decided to pay my respects to Jim Morrison and a few thousand other prominent artists and statesmen in Paris's largest cemetery.
The cemetery is so huge that it distributes free maps at one entrance and has an elaborate division and plot number system to allow visitors to find a particular grave:
Name Division Number
Jim Morrison 6 30
Chopin 11 20
Balzac 48* 97 * south of 48, to be exact
Oscar Wilde 89 83
Jim Morrison's grave itself was unimpressive, but easy to find thanks to the entourage of tourists, all carefully studying their maps, saying "Jim Morrison" in a variety of different accents, and following everyone else to the plot.
Morrison spent the final years of his life in Paris, where he was able to be left alone and write poetry. He died of a "heart attack" in his bathtub on July 3, 1971, but everyone suspects it was an overdose.
Upon his death, he was refused burial at Père-Lachaise until his partner mentioned that he had not just been a rock star but a poet. Mais, oui!
"Why am I standing here again, Daddy?" Lucy in front of Jim Morrison's grave.
The grave itself used to have a bust of the singer and poet but after it was stolen and the grave "decorated" one time too many, the cemetery management decided to put a barrier between the grave and the public. Instead of graffiti on the tombstone, visitors had to content themselves with putting little messages on a piece of paper then sticking them to a bamboo barrier complete with adhesive that had been set up around a nearby tree for this purpose. People scrawled various lyrics to his songs and used subway tickets to write little messages which they attached using what appeared to be chewed gum.
Lucy paying her respects to another musician, Chopin.
Then we walked and walked and walked, seeing the graves of Chopin and Oscar Wilde and thousands of people we had never heard of but who had really cool tombstones.
Heartbreaking homages to those deported to die in the Nazi concentration camps.
Finally, as Lucy started to lose her mojo, I paid tribute to the memorials erected in honor of those who had been deported and killed during World War II, a monument for each camp, as well as for resistance fighters, including an entire section that seemed to include nothing except communists. Paris is a very strange place sometimes.
Then we took the Metro back to the hotel, grabbed our luggage, and took the train home.
Fin
No comments:
Post a Comment