Paris 5

French word of the day: baguette = turns out it doesn't just refer to "breadsticks", but also to "chopsticks".

Mum and I rose earlier than the others today, because we had designs on Père Lachaise cemetery.

No, in all honesty. We're both closet cemetery-enthusiasts. Probably something to do with us both being highly impressionable, and having read far too many wistfully beautiful fantasy stories throughout our lives. "A Fine and Private Place", anyone? (And don't tell me you thought Peter Beagle only wrote about unicorns).

When we were in Paris 5 years ago we visited Père Lachaise in the foggy drizzle, and ravens came and sat on the bare branches above us while we wandered. Magical. This time, we were planning on visiting Montmartre cemetery instead, but mum's knee had given out early that day. And besides, this time we were keen to leave flowers on Oscar Wilde's monument (everyone else leaves lipstick kisses for him)... and see the folk-legendary grave of Victor Noir. For those of you who've been to Canberra and the war memorial, think of the bronze statue of Simpson and his donkey, and how polished the donkey's nose has become from being stroked by visitors. If I now tell you that Noir's grave-statue has been adopted as a fertility good-luck symbol, you ought to get the picture.

Anyway, mum and I set out about 9 on the metro. We clambered to the surface at Père Lachaise and managed to orient ourselves - the enormous grey wall of the cemetery was surprisingly hard to see, even though it was right in front of our eyes. We bought a map of the grounds from a little street-stall near the metro exit (See? It's a popular tourist destination!) and headed across the road to the florist.



Alas! The florist greeted us, and upon quickly realising that we were stupid foreigners, informed us that the cemetery is currently closed because of the bad weather and ice. It's the balance of things, I suppose - we got to see snow in Paris, so we had to pass up the cemetery. I'll be back someday, dearest Oscar! [Dramatic flourish...]

What to do now, though? We climbed back down the stairs to the metro, and deliberated. I wasn't very keen on going to see the Champs Elysees (stared in the exorbitantly expensive window displays there once, don't need to do it again... and don't particularly need to see the look-who-we've-whomped triumphal arch again, either). Instead, we decided to catch the train back to the Ile de la Cite, and go and see Notre Dame from the park behind.

On our way through the shut-up flower markets, we passed the crowd queuing to enter the Sainte-Chapelle. This is a rather beautiful little church that I remember visiting the other time I came to Paris - once you enter you climb a spiral staircase to the second floor, which is filled with coloured light from the beautiful stained glass windows set along each long wall. When I'd visited in 2003, there had been perhaps one other family visiting at the same time as us. Today, though, the queue was so long that it stretched out of the courtyard and into the street. People were being security scanned before they went in. Has somebody written some bestselling book and made the chapel famous since we were here last? I couldn't think of another convincing explanation as to why there was such a sudden surge in popularity. Oh well. We decided we'd rather not spend an hour waiting, and carried on past the crowd.

We pottered along the street carefully - there's still a lot of ice on the footpaths since the snow a few days ago. Once we got to the front of Notre Dame, we let ourselves through the swinging gate to the park beyond, and wandered among winter-emptied gardens, and pigeons the size of turkeys. The cathedral is more spectacular from the back than from the front - mum says it puts her in mind of a huge ship sailing up the Seine. Huge flying buttresses hold up the nave, and you can see the stained glass from the other side. Then there are all the gargoyles, of course...



We strolled around the snowy park happily, along with all the other people who'd brought along their cameras in order to take some cathedral home with them.



By this stage we had an hour before midday, when we'd agreed to meet dad and Pip back at our apartment. We walked back down the shadowy, freezing cold side of Notre Dame, and back over the bridge to the Paris's right bank. At this point we got adventurous, and struck out without a map along the Rue De Rivoli - an area the internet guides had recommended as being affordable during the Paris sales. We dodged cars (I nearly got taken out by a taxi), and took a look in some of the shops advertising 50 and 70% off. One of the things we found was a short red jacket that matched exactly Pip's description of her "dream coat"; the description she'd given me the day before, while the two of us had tried in vain to find something that would match. Well, mum and I strode back to the apartment by way of baguette-buying, in order to bring Pip out to try the jacket. The Paris sales being as insanely busy as they are, we made lunch quick in case the jackets in Pip's size had disappeared by the time we returned.

Well, they hadn't - and the jacket not only fits her, but suits her extremely well! Retail mission accomplished. (Typing those three words makes me feel so dirty and materialistic... heh).

With the four of us regrouped, we set out in the afternoon for the left bank. This is the student quarter of Paris; the place where the council have replaced Paris's cobblestones with concrete in order to stop the stones being prised up and thrown at police during demonstrations. I only exaggerate a little bit. This is the part of Paris where you should go if you want to be able to afford to eat out. This is the best place in the world to see the sorts of young men who epitomise the tortured, existentialist art-student look; all stubble, long coats and troubled gazes.
You guessed it - I like the left bank.

We wandered the streets, which is a wonderful pastime all to itself in a place like this. I saw lots of second-hand bookshops and places selling vinyl records... wedged in alongside restaurants specialising in all sorts of multicultural foods. I noted some prime examples of French-style parking, too.



We passed a university campus - not the famous Sorbonne, but still quite incredible. It stretched for blocks, composed of old buildings with very fancy stonework, each one declaring itself to be something like "Minerologie" or "Palaentologie". I'd never seen a university with its own observatory tower before.



We strolled on. Past the Cluny museum that houses the "Lady and the Unicorn" tapestries. Through backstreets that were familiar to mum and dad - this was the area they'd stayed the first time they came to Paris, in the eighties. We walked past the hotel they'd stayed in, which is still there.

On we went through streets that seemed narrower than those on the opposite bank, or perhaps just not to well-to-do. Then rather suddenly the streets opened up into a huge square, containing one of the most vast and imposing buildings I've ever come across. I think what makes the French Pantheon appear so brutally BIG is the fact that the side walls are totally without decoration. Just plain stone that rises up and up above the buildings that stand facing it, until a narrow band of carvings that surround the top. And then the dome sits atop all of that. The other houses around the square look quite cowed by the structure.



I was mystified - I'd never heard of the French Pantheon before. What the hell was it? "A sort of crypt", mum said... and then infuriatingly "you'll see".

We climbed the stairs to the faux-Roman colonnade before the entrance - stone all carved like lacy leaves around the capitals; shielding reliefs of bosomy women wielding wreaths above each set of doors. We went inside, where it was only marginally warmer than the winter day outside, and bought our tickets from a man who was terribly excited to meet a group of Australians.

And then we were into the bowels of the building. It is nothing short of incredible - an absolutely enormous space, designed rather like a cathedral on steroids. The pillars are decorated, the ceilings are carved to within an inch of being totally impractical; every wall is painted with an elaborate scene depicting the life of Joan of Arc, or St Geneviève. There are statues all around - big dramatic ones, carved either with allegorical women of improbable anatomy, or groups of soldiers banded together valiantly beneath their flags. On closer inspection, the sculptures on this level turn out to be monuments to various groups from French Post-Revolution history. The Pantheon, you see, was built as a gigantic monument to "The Great Men of France" - and also to house the bodies of the select few Great French Dead. Who are mostly military types or intellectuals. It's like a sort of secular cathedral. There's a fleeting nod-of-the-head to religion at the far end of the interior, where Jesus and company are depicted in a mosaic - but it'd be easy to miss them. The building was originally built as a cathedral, but was comandeered during the Revolution and turned into a mausoleum instead.

Hanging below the dome is the original Focault's pendulum, a scientific experiment that demonstrates the rotation of the earth, AND rather handily tells you the time of day. I couldn't help thinking that this was the Pantheon's equivalent of a cathedral's altar. This place is such a fascinating mix of subversion and self-importance. But don't get me wrong - a great deal of that self-importance is well-earned.

One of the sculptures on the upper level amused me greatly - it declared itself a monument to "The Generals of the Revolution". There were various figures wielding flags and guns above this inscription, surrounding a man on horseback - unmistakably Napoleon Bonaparte. Interesting to see Boney upheld in Revolutionary splendour, when you remember that this is the same man who sent France back to being as a monarchy - the same sort of monarchy he'd helped overthrow in the first place. I really enjoy discovering contradictions like this.

Down a narrow spiral staircase you can reach the crypt, which takes up the same floor-area underground as does the street-level building above. Down here the neoclassical grandeur is stripped back, in favour of bare sandstone walls and pillars, shaped into beautiful but stark corridors and curves. Silence prevails, and the only light comes from yellowy lamps in sconces along the passages. It's a bizarrely theatrical space... and utterly unselfconscious about it. The architect must have been totally shameless.



This is where some hundreds of "National Heroes" have been buried, to mark the honour or glory or advancement of human knowledge that each of them brought to France during their lifetimes. At first the idea appealed to me on some basic gut-level - a sort of anarchist monument that stuck a finger up at the church, and instead chose to immortalise human achievement. Testament to the humanist wonders of the tangible world, not the obscure mystical thingies of the supernatural world. Like a temple for atheists, or agnostics!

However, the attraction wore off considerably once I scanned the list of names of those interred here...
One woman, and one woman only. I checked twice. Apparently Marie Curie alone is considered worthy of a place among the Great Men of France, and the cynical part of me suspects it's largely because she and her husband together "make a nice pair", like trading cards.



Hmmmmmmm. To quote that other great French woman, Miss Clavel: "something is not right".

We eventually left the Pantheon, when Pip pointed out that she'd lost sensation in her feet with the cold. We set off along more Parisian backstreets, on our way to the Rue Moufftard to try and find the famous food market. There was no sign of any stalls, so we stopped for chicken and chips at a cheap cafe mostly populated by people who looked like uni students. When we finally set out again, we discovered the empty marquees of the market. We're not sure if the stalls had been taken down for the day, or not yet set out for the night - at any rate, we'd missed them. This is probably a good thing for our wellbeing - we have been binging on French cheese for a fortnight now.

It was getting towards late afternoon, and Pip was only getting colder. She and dad set out to catch the metro back home - unfortunately the ticket machine they found wouldn't accept dad's credit card, so the pair of them had to walk all the way back home instead.

Mum and I detoured back a short way, to a shop we'd walked past that afternoon. Mum had pointed it out to me for the wonderful ankle-length coats in the window, in amongst a variety of goth-lolita style dresses. Understand that while some little girls fantasise about one day owning a princess-y ball gown and a tiara (why d'you think western weddings are so extravagant?)... I have always pined after an ankle-length coat. Mum says "The Matrix" is to blame, but I'm pretty sure the obsession stems from somewhere deeper. Well... today I caved in to that particular Achilles heel, and now happily possess a black velvet coat that may get me mistaken on the street for a half-hearted goth. I couldn't be more delighted, which both amuses and appalls me. May this be the LAST time I ever go weak at the knees for an item of clothing!

Mum and I had no troubles with the metro, and met Pip and dad back at our apartment, warming themselves up. Shortly afterwards three of us left mum behind and went to scout for Chinese takeaway, which we found. The woman who sold it to us was terribly nice and didn't seem to mind spending a good 15 minutes engaged in charades of tupperware containers and chopsticks.

Back we went - ate - and slept, after I'd called my friend C back home.