7. Père Lachaise Cemetery

The cemetery of Père Lachaise is 4.5 km from our apartment and it takes 63 minutes to walk there, at a pretty fair pace!  How do I know this?  Because that is where we went yesterday afternoon.  I knew we were going to Père Lachaise - but I didn't realise we were going to walk the whole way!  Needless to say, we caught the train home.

Having hiked those 4.5 km up rue de la Republic to boulevard de Ménilmontant, I needed a coffee before tackling the 44 hectares of cobblestones and tree-roots of the old cemetry.  

For those of you who have been asking about prices - an espresso and a small beer cost 7€ ($8.83) at 3pm.

A small beer (300ml) and a large beer (500 ml) cost 12.50€ ($15.80) at 6pm - at the same cafe.

Fortified by my coffee (2.30€ or $2.91) we entered the cemetery through a side gate.  

"The cemetery takes its name from the confessor to Louis XIV, Père François de la Chaise (1624–1709), who lived in the Jesuit house rebuilt in 1682 on the site of the chapel. The property, situated on the hillside from which the king watched skirmishing, was bought by the city in 1804." Wikipedia.

Paul joined the throng trying to work out where the graves of the 250 or so famous people were.  After 5 minutes and despite notes on his iPhone, he gave up. It wasn't until we were leaving that we thought there might just be a phone app and of course there was.  But it cost the same as a map ..... and we weren't going to buy a map because we already have one.  We bought it in 1998 and it is at home in Geelong in a drawer.  And you can be sure that it is the same map as they are selling today for 3.50€.  

The only flat road/path is this one along the wall on the main road

Like all old cemeteries, this one is on a hill, so most roads and paths go upwards.

From the early 1800s until the the 1930s, most grave sites were narrow and tall.

But not all.  Some were broad as well as tall.

Some sites have had the stone removed to make way for a new grave.  Paul is of the view that someone somewhere is paying an annual fee for every site in this cemetery and when the payments stop, a plot can be resold to another family. Via the proper processes of course. Almost every site is a family plot.  Very few are the graves of individuals.

And when some work needs to be done - it is a pretty tight space in which to operate.

As in any cemetry, the oldest graves are to be found on the highest ground.

A lot of the oldest graves would have given way to these buildings (chapels and crematorium) built in the early 20th C.  This is still very much a "working" cemetery.

Great views.

And as everywhere else in Paris this month, tulips everywhere.

Including this child's grave.  They are real - not artificial.

Looking upwards from a lower path.

And here it is - Jim Morrison's grave.  Looking much worse than it did in 1998 and now completely fenced off.

View from the side.  I would have thought that his estate would have contributed to maintenance and upkeep, given the hundreds of visitors the grave attracts every day.  The surrounding monuments have taken a beating too.

The main gate of the cemetry and the road inside that is often used in movies. 

And a walk back to the Metro for a train ride home.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Père_Lachaise_Cemetery

6. You know it's cold in Paris when ...

You know it's cold in Paris when ...

... the Japanese tourists wear ear muffs instead of face masks.

You know it's cold in Paris when ... the kids are content to push their boats around with a stick, rather than wading in after them.

You know it's cold in Paris when ... the boat man has spare boats and no queue of kids.

You know it's cold in Paris when ... there are spare chairs around the fountain.

You know it's cold in Paris when ... there are only hundreds of people walking in the Tuileries, not thousands.

You know it's cold in Paris when ... no one wants to drive up the Champs Elysées in an open sports car.

You know it's cold in Paris when ... there is room to walk on the Champs Elysées without getting jostled.

You know it's cold in Paris when ...  the locals are queueing to get into a movie theatre. 

You know it's cold in Paris when ... NO-ONE is sitting on the top of the sightseeing bus.

And you know it's cold in Paris when ... Paul is wearing shoes.  But I was so focussed on getting home that I forgot to take a photo.

5. It's so cold in Paris!

It was soooooooo cold yesterday!

Because we haven't yet activated our travel passes (that happens on the first of next month), nor our museum passes (plenty of time for museums once we tire of discovering what is happening on the streets) we ventured out on Saturday morning at 11am in 8 degrees of cold with a freezing but light, breeze to see what was happening in the 'hood.

Lots of leather jackets - but still the odd idiot in shorts.

This guy is selling freshly picked lilac.

Opposite the lilac seller, the jazz band looked pretty uncomfortable.  There was obviously a cold draught coming through that doorway.

This guy, next to the jazz band, was pretty well rugged up and lasted the whole day: he was still there on the way home at 5pm.  He was selling a range of honey cakes.

What a huge box of pumpkins!  They were from the Passchendaele region in north-west France.

The pumpkins are obviously part of a Saturday delivery for our local "Palais du Fruit".

No Saturday deliveries for the fishmonger though.  The fish looked wonderful.

And there are these flower and plant shops all over the place.  Feeling the cold out in the street, we decided to head to the Hotel de Ville (the Town Hall) for a free INDOOR exhibition -Paris Haute Couture.

 

This gorgeous, restored carousel is in the huge forecourt of the Hotel de Ville.

The sign on the town hall, published by the Marie de Paris (Paris Council) reads - "France commits to the liberty of all political prisoners in the world" followed by "All human beings are born free and equal, in dignity and in rights" from the Declaration of Human Rights.

 

And here we are queuing in the cold for the exhibition.  About 15 minutes wait  but with free wifi to keep the masses entertained.

 

The exhibition was stunning with significant historical garments from the beginning of haute couture, around 1895 until about 2000.  There were ball gowns and feathered, velvet evening capes from 1900, followed by fabulous beaded gowns by Elsa Schiaparelli and Jeanne Lanvin in the 1920's and 30's, adorned with a folly of Swarovski crystal. Then Christian Dior's "New Look" after WW2 and Pierre Balmain's full skirts and strapless tops of the 1950's that we are all so familiar with through Hollywood movies.   

Next were the 1960's with Courreges, Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Cardin and a flatter, more geometric silhouette, bright colours and op art.  And of course the Chanel suit in 1954 that put an end to the full skirts of the "New Look" and has maintained itself from Coco Chanel in the 1920's, through Gabriel Chanel in the 1950's and Karl Lagerfeld in the 1970's and 80's.

No photography allowed, unfortunately.  There is a whole section of the Louvre dedicated to couture but it has been either closed or under renovation on each of our previous visits, but maybe I'll be lucky this time.  If not, I've discovered there is a Paris Fashion Museum as well as a Galleria Museum.  Now I know where I'll be going when Paul goes to the Arts et Métiers museum for the third time.  

Then it was back outside to the cold and a walk home along the river.

 

Not too many people walking along the banks of the Seine today, but the boats are packed.  This is a small one.

And this is a big one with the pilot in the pointy cockpit at the front.

And that 6 storey white-ish building on the Isle St. Louis in the middle of the Seine, is where we stayed 13 years ago in 2000, on 2nd floor.  The weather was superb on that visit and we used to take a picnic (cheese, wine and bread) down onto that lower level under the trees and right on the water, sitting for hours watching life on the river. Life at that time included the water police looking for bodies early each morning, movies and commercials being filmed, as well as the huge numbers of tourists passing over the bridges onto the islands.

If you look to the right you can see the two towers of Notre Dame on the next island, Isle de l'Cite.   These two islands in the Seine are the sites of the original areas of settlement of Paris.

Brrrr!  The temperature was falling and the breeze keener and even Paul said he was cold.  I hate to be a know-it-all Paul, but have you thought it might be the thongs?

4. Where's the swimming pool?

Not the only reason, but one of several reasons we are staying in the Montorgueil district, a stone's throw from Les Halles, is because the huge Les Halles retail, Metro and RER complex houses the best piscine (swimming pool) in Paris.

So, having settled into our apartment in rue Bachaumont, we set out to buy a three month pool membership for Paul. 

But alas - tres desolée! - what has happened to the pool?

Well ... it is underneath this enormous building site that is the six-year project to re-develop Les Halles.  To be specific, it is directly underneath that bright yellow Manitou arm you can see in front of La Bourse (the Chamber of Commerce) in the middle rear of the photo.

That is La Bourse in the background and St Eustace church on the right. 

The re-development is vast, covering several hectares at ground level and three or four levels underground.  There is that yellow Manitou in the far background where Paul's pool used to be.

St Eustache church is on the border of Les Halles (1st Arrondissement) and Montorgueil (2nd Arr).

So, having lost one pool, the best idea seemed to be to find another one.  This one looked inviting, and was only two streets away, but alas, school groups and swimming lessons only.

We had more luck at the Saint-Merri Piscine, neat the H otel-de-Ville (Town Hall).

Not a pretty building ...... but that doesn't matter, the pool looked fine.  Although  I must say it's a bit of a hike from rue Bachaumont - 1.2km and 15 minutes according to Google maps.  Whereas the pool at Les Halles, that has disappeared under a city of building construction, was only 500 metres.

Having solved the problem of the pool, we took up the challenge of finding Pylones.  

Our daughter-in-law Dani, bought her boys Jack and Henry, gifts from Pylones when she was in Paris with her mother Margaret, about 4 years ago.  And for the last four years we have used that beautifully designed and strong plastic bag from Pylones as the "wet" bag when we went to swimming lessons and the pool.  So it is now a bit the worse for wear and we have all been looking at it for what seems like forever.  So Dani, who always comes up with things out of left field, suggested that we might like to find the Pylones shop and get a new swimming bag.

So we headed out in 8 degrees of warmth, to find Pylones.

And guess where it is?  Just around the corner!

Turns out that it is not a toy shop but a design shop.  One thousand and one everyday household, office and personal items re-designed in the most colourful and stunning ways.

It was fascinating!  We haven't got the new swimming bag yet because it was just too difficult to choose between all the clever and amusing items.  We'll visit again in a few weeks.

And on the way home we passed the electric cigarette shop, which had no lack of customers (that's a queue you can see inside).

And these are the electric cigarettes.  Select you favourite model and then purchase nicotine and/or perfumed smoke as required, dispensed via micro-cylinders inserted in the holder.

And before the ever-decreasing temperature (7 degrees and falling at this point) sent us back to the warmth of our little apartment, Paul made sure he posted a post-card for Jacque et Henri.

What you can't see in the photo are the thongs!  They are blue thongs.  They match his toes.