Bloggo Ventinovesima: Return to Paris - with Students! Saturday

 After a very good night's sleep and a typical French hotel continental breakfast: croissant, baguette, strong dark coffee and orange juice, I made my way to the Pere Lachaise metro stop, where I met up with Bill and the students as we embarked on his walking tour of that very famous cemetery. 

Students at the Pere Lachaise metro station

A visit to a cemetery? What sort of tour is that? First of all Pere Lachaise is a beautiful space, quiet and peaceful in an otherwise boisterous big town, but more importantly, particularly in great and long-lived cities such a visit is an excellent way to get to know the history of the place, from all sorts of different angles. 

In this random photo I was interested in the rough-hewn monument
just left of center, so different from elegant graves
surrounding it. Who knows why? But it stands out.

We stopped at graves of famous people, of holocaust victims, of French Resistance fighters, of the Paris Communards, actually murdered IN the cemetery at their last stand in 1871, set alongside monuments small and large to much more recent  much less well-known individuals. I saw several graves from 2010, for example.


It's particularly interesting to visit with students, who have sometimes not even heard of the people we are seeking out, or who can remember the name, but have no idea what it is they were/are famous for. I must admit that I'm very pleased to be an educator at times like these, as when a student asks who this or that is I can actually offer answers, most of the time at least. I wonder if they'll remember? Whether or not, the information has been passed along, and may even be retained to be passed on again, by the questioning student.

Bill offers the students an overview just outside the entrance

Bill spoke a bit about the cemetery itself and we then entered. It's huge, and more than a bit of a maze. I was pleased with myself as I spotted very close to the entrance the monument to the great composer Rossini. 

From there we climbed on and searched on, particularly for a few particularly famous resting places. The first spotted by a student was relatively easy to find because so many bouquets of flowers surrounded it -- also a few whine and whiskey bottles! Doors founder Jim Morrison, famed as much for his wild life-style as for his music: live fast, die young -- and die young he did!

Jim Morrison's grave site

After that first relatively easy find the hunt for celebrities grew more difficult. We never actually found Chopin, though I'm convinced we wandered within a few yards of that composer's resting place.


But a few of the students became very fine trackers, and among the monuments they found were:

Edith Piaf

Moliere

Sarah Bernhardt

and Gertrude Stein

The greatest disappointment was Oscar Wilde, because he was, for the months of October and November, in mufti!

Note the looks on the faces of some of the students. They had been taken on a Wilde walk through Chelsea in London only recently, but alas, they were denied a look at his final resting place!


While we walked through this lovely place, I was reminded of a song that I think we must have sung in high school chorus -- I'm remembering only pieces of it. I know it began,
"Madame Jeanette, when the sun goes down, sits at her window and..."
"looks at the town" maybe?
and ended with:
"Madame Jeanette, she will wait there I know, till..." more missing words, though I'm hearing the melody, then...
"wait there and watch, till the end of her days, they take her to slumber in Pere Lachaise...in Pere Lachaise."
Ah memory! Maybe one of my readers can enlighten me?


But! I realize that this post is more photos than words, but I do have many pictures on facebook, so check there if you like. For now,  I think that I'll move forward in our second and last day in Paris to our next walk!


We took a metro to the Abbesses stop, a good portion of the way up to Montmartre.

Abbesses, on a very festive Saturday morning

It IS a mountain, the highest as well as one of the best known areas of Paris, a tourist trap now, but at one time the hangout of great French painters and writers, and in spite of commercialism, a quite wonderful place even today. The goal of our climb was to reach Sacre Coeur, from which the view of Paris is literally breathtaking. We stopped along the way at a few spots such as Bateau-Lavoir, where Picasso painted in 1904, and at the Place du Tertres, in which all sorts of painters not nearly as great will offer to paint your portrait -- generally a not very good job at a not very cheap price!


But we did attain the summit. The very strange 19th century church called Sacre Coeur, which the Rough Guide to Paris describes in this way: "a weird pastiche of a Byzantine church whose pimply tower and white ice-cream dome has somehow become an essential part of the Paris skyline." I've still never been inside, though I have made the pilgrimage for the view and just for the fun of it more than once.

Students at Sacre Coeur

Once there we were left on our own for lunch, after which Bill offered to meet at Sacre Coeur any students that wanted advice on where to head next. Bill, Linda, Sarah and beau and I chose the restaurant La Boheme -- yes, I know, fairly obvious choice, and on the fairly obvious Place du Tertres -- but it was inexpensive, comfy, and the grub was good.

After students were sorted I went off on my own meander through Montmartre, looking for a few places I'd been to before, finding a few by surprise, a few by plan, and stumbling onto places I'd not yet seen but enjoyed so that I plan to stop at them again in the spring.


Coming down from Montmartre I decided to walk to the Moulin Rouge. On my way,  via a charming tree-lined walkway in the middle of the Boulevard de Clichy, I noted even more sex shops, sexodromes, even a museum of eroticism than I'd remembered. Such a beautiful autumn day, such a lovely walkway, and such trash on either side! Paris!

The Sexodrome???

I found my way by foot back to my hotel, where at about 3 pm I decided I'd had enough for a while, and opened my balcony doors to breathe in the fresh air and have a nap. It was then that I heard lovely, somewhat wistful music played on a guitar or other stringed instrument. I had a look out to see where it was coming from, and I spotted on a balcony opposite me a young person sitting, staring into the distance, and playing for no one but himself. I was just lucky to be his captive audience. Encore, Paris!

The soloist on the balcony

Dinner that night was in the section of Paris near the Pantheon, an area along the Rue Mouffetard packed with charming restaurants and packed with young people, mostly students, I suspect, other than the majority which were tourists like us. We et at a fondue place and were probably the only ones in the place NOT eating fondue, but ordering from a fixed menu. It was tasty, but we'd been spoiled by the dinner the night before at the Place des Vosges -- not disappointed, certainly filled, fine in fact. Just not Ma Bourgogne. We strolled back via the Pantheon, the Luxembourg Gardens (too dark to enjoy, but nice to know they were there) and the Sorbonne. 

The Sorbonne by night

Then onto the metro, back to their hostel and my hotel respectively, a good night's sleep and next morning back to the Gare du Nord to take the Eurostar back to a London that seemed a bit dreary after our brilliant weekend in Paris!