The sun is setting behind some light clouds, and we are ensconced at a table at the Bar Cluny, not far from the Musee Cluny, which we have just visited. The Left Bank is lively on a Sunday afternoon, so we have plenty of company here. Yvette peruses the Musee Cluny guidebook I purchased (yes, I have broken my rule about book buying twice now) while I blog.
Have I mentioned the weather? Oh, my gosh, what a gorgeous day to visit the dead! So, that's what we did this morning.
We arrived at the Gambetta Metro station, ready to give Rick "the Dick" Steves a chance to redeem himself after his disastoruous instructions in Reims. And, I'm happy to report, he is now redeemed. His tour of Pere Lachaise was terrific--and we didn't get lost once!
Before undertaking what we knew would be a walk of monstrous proportions, we stopped in at a little cafe. The waiter was a surly, older fellow, so we said he was....
Master of the House
Keeper of the Zoo
Ready to Relieve us
of a Euro or two.
Cafe Americain for Yvette and cafe creme for me, and we felt strong enough (and caffeine high enough) to beard the dead in their den.
We began at the top end of the cemetery, the tour designed by Rick to be more downhill than up. Prior to our arrival in France, I had developed a playlist on my phone so that my intrepid companion might have a muscial accompaniment.
Cue Si Tu Vis Ma Mere from Midnight in Paris.
Walking up the main thoroughfare, we passed the memorials to the World Wars.
Cue James Cagney and Frances Langford singing "Over There."
At the big Columbarium (where the post office boxes are), we searched in vain for Maria Callas. We know she's in there somewhere, but we're damned if we know where.
Cue Maria singing an aria from Carmen.
Here we experienced our first contact with other people seeking the same dead celebs as us. In this case, a man followed the music, believing that Maria's voice must be coming from her post office box. When he discovered it was from my phone, he seemed a little disappointed.
Next stop was Oscar Wilde.
Cue Rod Stewart singing Forever Young.
Oscar's tomb is a strange-looking one, sort of a modern-looking angel on a low-level flight. What makes it even more unique are the dozen of lipstick kisses on its granite surface. Apparently so many people (more men, I'm guessing than women) have paid their respects to Oscar with a little kiss, some falling on the emasculated boy-parts on the bottom of the angel. To knock this kissing off, a plastic partition now wraps around Oscar's angel--no more lipstick for this guy. On the back on the tomb, there is an English inscription about how outcasts are always mourning. Makes you feel like, although Oscar's life was lived in abundance, he had a loneliness inside.
Notice the lipstick kisses
Cue Je Suis Sel Ce Soir from Midnight in Paris
Next stop was a visit with Nor Cal gal, Gertrude Stein. She's got a little, nondescript tomb, but people have left a lot of stones on top, signifying a lot of Jewish prayers. Of course, she's got Alice B. Toklas in there with her. I love her quote, "America is my country. Paris is my hometown."
Taking a moment to: (1) visit with Gertrude Stein
and Alice B. Toklas, and (2) to look like my mom!!!
Not far from Gertrude and Alice, a series of monuments recall the terrors of the Holocaust. The sculptures on these memorials, all of skeletal figures, evoke a lot of emotion. I don't know what else to say about these--I didn't take any pix as they are just too sad.
Cue One Day More from Les Miserables
In 1871, the last stand of the Communards as they fought off the right-wing French government came against the wall of Pere Lachaise. French soldiers killed the last of the fighters right against the cemetery walland buried them where they fell. There is now a nice memorial on that wall. I know that "One Day More" takes place during the Revolutions of 1848, but the overall theme works for the Communards as well.
Cue Edith Piaf singing La Vie en Rose
Edith was surrounded by well-wishers when we found her. While I had the volume on my phone turned down low, it was still audible to some young girls standing beside the tomb. They, like the man in the Columbarium, seemed to think the music was coming from Edith herself until I set them straight by waving my phone to indicate that I was causing the singing. To her credit, Yvette did not seem embarassed by my behavior but rather simply rolled with it.
Yvette says, "Only Lorraine would bring music to a cemetary and dance amongst the dead."
Cue the title theme from the film Moliere
We found Moliere also surrounded by people (these are apparently very important stops along the cemetary pilgrimage). What was sad about Moliere was the story we read in Rick that talked about his final performance: Moliere was a sick man at this point but one whose doctors thought was a hypochondriac, and he played a well man who was a hypochondriac in his final play. He collapsed on stage, truly dying, while the audience cracked up. Rick has a good Moliere quote, "We die only once, and for such a long time."
Cue Love Her Madly by the Doors.
Yes, like Americans for the past 40 years, Yvette and I paid homage to Jim Morrison. While there was no security guard in place (there had been one when Reiner and I were here in 1996 and Rick seemed to think there would be one), the tomb was still pretty blocked off. I feel sorry for the other people "parked" here for eternity--Jim's admirers are many, and I saw several selfies taken with him.
Maddie--this picture of a crow is for you; they were all
over the cemetery!
Cue Nocturne by Frederic Chopin.
Here's another musical genuius who attracts a big following. A tomb marked with candles and flowers, "Fred" Chopin is apparently best known for his funeral dirge. You know the one, "dum dum de dum dum de dum de dum de dum."
If you look closely, you can see the Eiffel Tower in
the distance
Cue the hymn, O What Their Joy as sung by the Manchester Cathedral Choir.
This was my favorite part--the tomb of Heloise and Abelard. Talk about romantic (sigh). There they are, in effigy, laying side by side, together for eternity as they could not be during their lives. Their tomb is beautiful, their story inspiring, and a sculpture of a dog laying at Abelard's feet denotes the fidelity of their relationship. With the beautiful hymm playing in the background, this proved the most inspirational visit of all those we met at Pere Lachaise.
Cue Maurice Chevalier singing Thank Heaven for Little Girls
The great Colette! I read one of her Claudine novels the last time Yvette and I came to Paris. Of course, we know her best for her novel, Gigi, and the wonderful screen adaption. I believe she would have liked "Thank Heaven" playing at her grave site--or not, and she would have rolled her eyes and thought, "please, not that damned Chevalier again!"
While I had songs for the last two graves, that of Rossini the composer (the William Tell Overture) and Baron Haussmann, I played Baron Haussmann's song, Ella Fitzgerald singing I Love Paris, as we walked out through the main gate of Pere Chaise, both of us smiling with sincere pleasure at having had such a nice walk with dead people.
All that walking made us hungry, and we scored a table at a cafe. You must think we do nothing but visit cafes, and, in a way, you're right. Cafe sitting, sipping on a drink or munching on a little lunch, is one of the grand joys of this city. You see all manner of people when you take a seat at a cafe. For example, as I write this, there is an obnoxious man beside us, maybe Italian or Spanish (he speaks a heavily accented English but apparently no French). He has ordered himself a plate of escargot, perhaps in an effort to please the lady he has brought in with him. First, he told the waiter about how the escargot should have been prepared, then he proceeded to demonstrate a stunning lack of skill with the little escargot holder thingys.
But I digress. Back to my story.
The next item on our travel agenda was the Cluny Museum of the Middle Ages. Located at a site that was at one time or another a Roman bath, a Clunaic Abbey, and the townhouse of an art collector, it has been a museum since the mid-nineteenth century. A lot of its treasures are of a religious nature, but the star of the show is the "Lady and the Unicorn" tapestries. So lovely. Five tapestries explore the five senses, while a sixth is thought to refer to the "sixth sense" or the moral and ethical heart of a person. The detail in these tapestries is amazing, and one cannot imagine the time and attention required to create such an object. In fact, all of the tapestries at the Cluny were remarkable, and I'm so glad we got see them (in spite of the fact that the temperature of the museum felt like it was in excess of 90 degrees Fahrenheit).
I also loved the room dedicated to armour and other accoutremont of war. My first sighting of chain mail, up close and personal. And I thought I was hot wearing a short-sleeved knit sweater!
Chain mail = cool!
Early Christian nesting dolls?
Finishing the Cluny led us here, to the Bar Cluny, where the escargot man (confirmed as from Spain) continues to hold forth for the edification of his companion and our poor beleagured waiter.
Les Deux Magots for dinner....
Hotel Alane, Sept. 28, 2014
Back in the room, with a sigh of relief as the shoes come off and a cool shower cools both blisters and enormous hair.
It turns out that getting to Les Deux Magots for dinner was no easy feat (or easy on the feet). As the map said it was only half a mile, we determined to hoof it rather than catch the Metro. A gallant thought on our part, except that we walked in the exact wrong direction. The half-mile walk turned into something closer to a mile and a half, and I insisted that we give up and catch a train. Yeah, I'm wearing down....
Les Deux Magots was not quite as I remember it from last time. It is far more luxurious and expensive, with a more limited menu. Hemingway would never go there now. But, we settled in and had a delicious dinner, wine, dessert. The people-watching was as fun as last time. Next to us, we had Jim's wife, who spent the dinner hour telling her companion all about the trips she's made to Paris in the past and how those affected Jim. We saw one guy how may or may not be a famous jockey. And we saw Miss Cool. Miss Cool was wearing a tight-fitting beige dress and these killer shoes, which may or may not have been Manolo Blahniks. She wore her dark hair sleek against her head, and every move she made was elegant. She took a table, ordered a bottle of Perrier, and proceeded to look at her phone. Sadly, though, as time passed and she continued to sit there alone, she became less elegant. She crossed her legs in an ungangly way and then rubbed her foot (that's when I felt Miss Cool and I had something in common). Still, when she departed, alone, we felt bad that she had been stood up. She was so elegant.
Speaking of elegant, Yvette and I are using this time in Paris to improve our dining skills. Watching Europeans eat, we notice that they tend to always hold a fork in the right hand and a knife in the left. They use the knife to help them put the food on the fork, and it looks very chic. I ate my salad that way tonight, and I feel I am a better person for it.
Tomorrow is our last day, and we really don't have anything concrete planned--besides doing some shopping. Until then,
Au revoir....
P.S. Yvette says "It's official! Lorraine Herbon is a coffee drinker."
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