A Day for Parks & Cemeteries

Thursday was another glorious, sunny day, and we decided to take a break from museums and spend all day outside. Our first destination was the Père Lachaise Cemetery, which I had been to once before, but Aaron had not. (The first time I was there was with my brother Erik in 2000 on our Spain/France trip, although it seems to me we didn't spend much time in the cemetery -- maybe we arrived shortly before closing time? -- and we mainly sought out the grave of Jean de la Fontaine while Erik taught me the poem about la cigale et la fourmi, which he had learned in French class in high school.)

Since Père Lachaise Cemetery is the final resting place of dozens of people of note, free maps are available at the gate to help you find anyone in particular you may be interested in paying your respects to -- although, as we discovered, even with the map it is often easier said than done. We and half a dozen other people spent a good 5 or 10 minutes combing the rows of tombstones on a particular hillside before someone finally located what we were all looking for: the grave of Edith Piaf. Others are easier to find, like Oscar Wilde, whose tomb is an enormous white statue conveniently located right next to one of the wider walking paths -- and continuously surrounded by a crowd of people. The sign admonishing visitors not to deface his grave has not done much good; the statue is covered with graffiti and dozens (quite possibly hundreds) of lip imprints. We opted not to add our lips to the collection.

From the cemetery, we hopped on the metro again and headed down near the Gare d'Austerlitz to check out the Jardin des Plantes, which turned out to be pleasant but not quite as interesting as we had hoped. The "labyrinth" turned out to be nothing more than a dirt walking path spiraling up a hill, and most of the impressive-looking old buildings lining the main promenade appeared to be either closed to the public or closed for renovation. Probably the best thing about the Jardin des Plantes was that, as foreigners, we felt distinctly in the minority, whereas many of the places in central Paris we've visited thus far seem to be about half French people and half tourists.

The Jardin des Plantes is on the south bank of the Seine, so upon exiting we crossed the river and went looking for the Canal St. Martin, which we had read had been redeveloped into a nice walking area. We found the canal, but fairly quickly realized that this was not the section of it we'd been looking for -- the redeveloped part of the canal is at least a mile farther north and will have to wait for some other day. Still, the short section of canal between the Seine and Place Bastille was a pleasant place to walk without being right next to a busy street and gave Aaron the chance to ponder whether he'd prefer to live on one of the boats we saw moored there or one of the barges we'd seen on the Seine. I think right now he's leaning toward a barge.

Our final stop before heading back home was the Place des Vosges (formerly the Place Royale), which was quite nice and I'm sure will merit a return trip. The center of the plaza is now a public park, and most of the first level of the buildings that form the square has now been converted to restaurants and boutiques. Victor Hugo's house (now a museum) is there, too -- their permanent collection has free admission, so we will certainly go back there and check it out sometime soon.

Today's pics: Mostly from Père Lachaise Cemetery; people jogging in the Jardin des Plantes; Canal St. Martin and a boat called "The Old Butterflies"; a fountain in Place des Vosges; a billboard we saw for the Paris Marathon (which is this coming Sunday! - we're planning to go watch part of it).