In Paris

Bonjour, mes amis! We are in Paris, which is such a beautiful and amazing city where people speak a language that I can understand at least a little bit of! I loved Germany, but France... J'adore la France!

 We started the day with a tour at Père Lachaise Cemetery. Those who know me know that I *love* a cemetery, and the cemeteries of Paris are the ultimate! There are four major ones, each in north, west, south, or east Paris, and Père Lachaise is the cemetery in the east. Dan will have better photos, I'm sure, but here I will share mine:

  This memorial to the more than 94,000 Parisians who died in WWI lists the names by year that they died, with a category at the end for those who died at an unknown time. You can read more about the wall at https://memorial14-18.paris.fr/memorial/#. It was unbelievable. 

One of the gates at the cemetery

 
This is the ossuary where they store the bones of those bodies that occupy gravesites that the families no longer want to pay for. There are approximately half a million boxes of bones at this point. Families are often buried in layers here, and sometimes bones are removed and room for additional bodies result. The waiting list for this cemetery is years-long. 

 
The memorial to Heloise and Abelard. They are not really buried here, but when the cemetery was started in the early 18th century, people did not want to be buried there, so it was decided that some "famous" people should be "buried" there in order to lure more customers - and these two were among the famous.  

 
This is the monument to a Madame Stroganoff. The story is that a fortune was promised to whatever man could sit in the monument with the body of Ms. Stroganoff for 365 days, but no one could do it. 

This is the dude who made the potato popular in France. 

This was Cody's Facebook posting. Like his father, he has a strange way with the English language.  

 

Honoring a Lego

Victor here was shot dead by the police during the Revolution of 1870. His friends had this monument made for him. It is said that if you kiss his lips, you will be married within the year, and if you touch this feet, you will either travel or a past love will come back to you. If you touch is appendage (and what I would say must be a very generous gift from his friends), you will be pregnant within the year. 

Where Dan wants some of his ashes sprinkled 

After the cemetery, we had a café and croissant and took the Metro up to Montmartre and walked around toward the Moulon Rouge. Our lunch was in in a lovely cafe, where we had onion soup and Dan and Cody did their carnivore thing.

 

On the way back to the apartment, we went by Nicholas Flemel’s house, and Cody did some AI alchemy to his photo. (For those who have not read or seen Harry Potter, it's a Harry Potter thing.)

 

 

I left my phone in the apartment when we went back out, so I will leave the rest of the day's post to Dan. 

 

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Dan:

 

I did indeed take a few photos in the cemetery. It is an incredible place.

 

 

 

This is the tomb of Collette, a French author/actor who had a very interesting life. She should probably be in the Pantheon, in my humble opinion. I wrote a paper on her in grad school.

 

The gravesite everyone from the U.S comes to see: Jim Morrison. 

Another site visited by many, especially those from Poland: Chopin. People come here with flowers, often crying. According to our guide, they must have just cleaned up, because there are usually many more flowers.

My greatest disappointment was learning that the gravesites of two more authors was fake. I studied the fables of La Fontaine and the the plays of Moliere - and used them both in the classes I taught at Christian Brothers High School. Actors and the like were not worthy to be given the sacraments or a proper burial, so they were likely dumped into the sewers to later become part of the Catacombs (which are temporarily closed, much to Cody's chagrin.) If France had the remains of these two, they would no doubt be in the Pantheon. There needs to be a greater memorial to both.

And the last site: Oscar Wilde. His tomb is now behind plexiglass, because people kept kissing he statue and as it was cleaned, the stone was being worn away. Also, someone removed the phallus that was originally on the statue. 

 

This is what it could look like before protection (photo lifted from a website):

We then headed off to a cafe and continued our adventures. We made short visits to see the Sacre Coeur and the Moulin Rouge.

 

 And the house of alchemist Nicolas Flamel

 

Saw some random art on a side street

 

After a short break (for charging phones), we went to the Tour Montparnasse, probably the best place to see Paris at night, including the Eiffel Tower, which is beautiful when lit.

 

 

And on the hour, it goes wild! (videos by Cody!)

Then it was dinner time at this wonderful place, Au Pied de Fouet, recommended by our tour guide at Père Lachaise. We got there 20 minutes before they opened and were right behind another couple. The lady running the place wouldn't let us sit out in the cold and let us all in, sat us down, and fixed us up with some water until they opened. The place was filled very quickly - it could only hold about 38 people - and the food and service were wonderful. We also chatted with some people around us, and they were delightful. I'd much rather dine in a place like this than any Michelin restaurant.

 

 

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Vicki: We walked over 7.5 miles yesterday, which does not beat our record of 8.1 in Budapest, but it's a lot. Dan's feet are feeling it - but what can you do but walk in Paris - so that you can eat in Paris? ❤️