pere lachaise and eartha kitt

Posted on | June 24, 2010 | 1 Comment

i struggled up off my deathbed yesterday at last.
what a difference a couple of days rest and a hit of antibiotics can make!
we strolled down to the river and over to notre dame….the queue was unthinkable, so we walked all around the outside of notre dame and marvelled at the gargoyles (they all look like angry cats to us) and the endless decorative stonework and the fabulous flying buttresses and the stained glass for a while….then we found ourselves at the batobus stop, so we hopped onto a glass topped boat and drifted up and down the seine for a couple of hours.
very lazy way to see the sights….the trouble with paris is that there is just too much of it!
o look, the eiffel tower. o look, the pont neuf. o look, the obelisk of luxor. o look, les invalides. o look, the louvre and the louvre and the louvre and the louvre!
it’s all a bit overwhelming.

the bridges are so beautiful and there are lots of them…i hummed a few bars of eartha kitt’s “under the bridges of paris” to get myself properly into place.

we love the area we are staying in….le marais….the small food shops around here are just wonderful and everything i’ve ever hoped for.
chocolatiers….patissiers….boulangeries….wine shops….wine bars…cheese specialists….a honey shop….and that is all within a block or two of our apartment.
everywhere there are people walking around with a baguette….it’s so paris.
we’ve been greeted with cheery bonjours everywhere we go….they must know we are freaked out foreigners….and we adore shouting cheery bonjours back.
i know it’s wrong to just shove people into a category, but all the parisians we have met so far have been utterly charming and civil.
frankly, if i had bread like that every day and access to all that pastry, i’d be utterly charming and civil too.
food is culture after all.

i cannot stop eating baba au rhum…..hardly anyone makes this in australia and if they do, they are small miserable affairs, not like the enormous syrupy boozy soft baba au rhum of rue st antoine.
and the peaches and cherries are to die for.
and the poilane bread was every bit as good as i have been imagining for years.
maurice came home with a sliced half round of poilane sourdough and we have been chewing steadily through it with poached eggs….and cheese and tomato and salami…..and sometimes with just a lot of normandy butter slapped all over it.

of course, i’ve had nothing to drink so far.
no wine, anyway.
i’ll finish my antibiotics first.
but i am getting terribly thirsty.

today we set off walking in the opposite direction than yesterday, with no real plan.
i suggested we just walk and we’d definitely find something interesting….that’s paris.
so we walked through the place de la bastille and we walked along the rue fauborg st antoine and we had a slight tiff at the place voltaire so maurice suggested some pastry and a drink because maybe we were getting hungry, so we dived across the street and had orangina, and i had a poire gallette kind of thing and maurice had an almond croissant and then we looked at the paris map app in the iphone and we saw that if we just carried on up the rue de la roquette a little more, we’d be at pere lachaise.
so off we trotted and it was getting quite warm by now.
we were grateful to get into the shade at pere lachaise.
what wonderful ambiance there!
shady trees and mouldering old tombs and crypts with every imaginable style of decoration and then modern large crypts and memorials….thousands and thousands and thousands of them, all set out on meandering shady cobblestoned paths that wind up a hillside.
there are 300,000 people interred at pere lachaise and a heap of famous types.
we joined in a frenzied treasure hunt for jim morrison’s grave….i encouraged a wad of people to break up and all search rows independently….and maurice was the eventual finder of the grave.
it wasn’t anywhere near where it had been marked on the official map….he was canny enough to see a few people waving cameras about, some rows over, and to go nosing about.
poor jim’s grave was half hidden behind a crypt, closed off with sturdy official metal railings, and looking very tawdry and folorn.
rum bottles….dead flowers….graffiti….but no dancing naked mourners or drunk poets or people shooting up or anything like that.
it was weird to be there.
the bust of jim wasn’t there…..i bet it has been smashed or vandalised with paint.
the whole thing was sad.

so, we went looking for oscar wilde.
we climbed the hill and the whole thing started to look a bit smarter and posher.
we were moving into the money perhaps.
we found dear oscar quite easily, under an enormous and beautiful stone memorial featuring a very modernistic swooping angel, the whole being covered in lipsticked kisses and anguished graffitied notes.
i thought about the happy prince and sniffled a little (as i do) and it was all very nice.
i declined to leave a lipsticked kiss…whatever the sentiment, it is still desecrating a grave, non?
and so we departed……for some really delicious little toasted paninis w/ chicken breast/mayonnaise/tomato/soft cheese, at a shop near us.
and a baba au rhum to go.

tomorrow….i’ll have a crack at the louvre.
but the size of the place….it is somewhat intimidating.

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hi, i'm patti flynn

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