06/17/12: Good intentions fail to overcome exhaustion

As good a start as our trip to Montparnasse Cemetery was, it was about all that we could reasonable do in a single day. We took a walk past the Luxembourg Gardens, crossed the Seine, and eventually arrived at the old Roman amphitheater, the Arènes de Lutèce. It was worth seeing, but the heat and jet lag caught up with us.

Here are some pictures of the arena. People were setting up a stage for the Fête de la Musique later in the week.

 Earlier in the day, when we stopped to rest and talk, we sat beneath the statue of Marshal Ney, still striking a heroic pose after all these years. If only he had been as good at command as he was at theatrics.

We also passed this striking staircase, with a devilish face leering from the fountain.

And we passed this very inviting display of seafood...

And the Pantheon....

And the very Romanesque church of St. Etienne.

06/17/12: Montparnasse Cemetery

Since the Montparnasse Cemetery was a block from our hotel, it seemed like the logical place to start any sight-seeing. It was a pleasant surprise, definitely not what either of us expected.

As the guide books will tell you, Montparnasse Cemetery is the official resting place of famous figures from many walks of life, such as Guy de Maupassant, Bernard Lacoste, Samuel Beckett, Jules Henri Poincaré, Alfred Dreyfus, Emile Durkheim, Eugène Ionesco, and oh so many more. Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir are probably the most famous residents of Montparnasse, beneath very modest headstones. (Perhaps the Being of their grave markers is all that is required. Anything else would be bad faith.)

What the guidebooks fail to tell you is how untraditional many of the grave sites are. Not surprising for France, creative and unexpected design crops up frequently. Here are some prime examples.

Here is the grave of the chess grand master Alexei Alekhine. Note the chessboard.

Montparnasse has many Jewish graves, as you might tell from this picture.

And here is the Adams family crypt. (Couldn't resist.)

On this trip to Paris, I noticed far more remembrances of World War I than on previous trips, such as this grave of a Great War veteran.

And World War II left its mark on Montparnasse, too.

The French do have strong political opinions, all the way to the grave.

This was one of my favorite headstones. The woman buried here, Maryse Bastié, was a pioneering aviator who later headed France's Legion of Honor. Quite a woman.

06/16/12: The Rue Daguerre, staying in Paris

One of the big benefits of staying at the Hotel Montparnasse was the Rue Daguerre, a street full of shops and restaurants that was just a stone's throw away.

I don't think it's possible to understand what people love about Paris if you don't spend some time in a neighborhood like this one. If all you do is stay in a hotel and visit well-trafficked tourist sites, you'll never see why someone would want to live in this city.









The Rue Daguerre had a typical mix of specialized food shops for cheese, wine, bread, pork, and other staples. It also had a shop that specialized just in foie gras.

Regularly, outside the wine story, a chess game was in progress.

Here's a quick meal we assembled from different shops on the street. The pink round items are a jellied egg and salmon. There's also a cheese rolled in mango pieces.

There was a Monoprix supermarket on the same street, but we never visited it. Why, if you can eat this well?

Not surprisingly, the Rue Daguerre had its share of bistros and cafes. We're having breakfast here, at the cafe at the mouth of the street.

We also found a great crepe place, just off the Rue Daguerre.

Great food is reason enough to visit these cafes. Sitting outdoors is another. If that's not attractive enough, how about running into family and friends? That's what you see every day, all day, the extremely sociable side of Paris.

By the way, if you think that the French are snobs about their language, don't. It might have been a fair stereotype in earlier generations. Today, you often hear people switch to English happily, as did one group that was having breakfast near us when an American acquaintance joined them.

06/16/12: Arrival in Paris

The trip was part business, part vacation. I had a one-day work-related event on Monday, where I got to blab about software development and delivery with clients, plus a client meeting the following day. It was a great opportunity to tarry few more days afterwards, so off we went.

On the way from Charles De Gaulle airport, our cab passed the most memorably-named hotel in France, Mr. Bed City. If you're going to pander to the English-speaking traveler, you might as well go all the way.

While we could have stayed at the convention hotel, we opted instead to stay at different lodgings nearby. The Villa Montparnasse was cheaper, and a lot less corporate, so it was an easy pick.

The hotel has an African theme. Or, to be more accurate, African touches. A display case has African figurines. The back of the elevator is glass, and the wall behind it is painted to look like a tree stretching from floor to floor, on which monkeys are playing.

Not related to Africa at all, the hotel had the coolest room keys ever.

Both Kathleen and I were not familiar with the neighborhood, in the 14th arrondissement, near the Denfert-Rochereau Metro station. It's a lot less touristy than other parts of Paris where we've stayed, even when we've rented an apartment. (That's how we visited Paris in the past: stay a couple of weeks, rent an apartment instead of a hotel room, and live like Parisians as much as possible for the time available. If you want to learn about Paris, I can't recommend this approach enough.)

Our room overlooked the Montparnasse Cemetery. More on that very interesting landmark later. For views outside of our window, click here, here, and here.

There wasn't much to do on our first day, other than get settled in, eat, and try to adjust to the time zone difference.

A chronicle of a short but excellent vacation

This blog is a chronicle of our vacation to Paris in June 2012. It wasn't our longest vacation, nor was it our first to Paris. However, it was a great vacation.

We hit that magic combination of exploring a city with taking time to relax and enjoy it. One part of our enjoyment rested on places and things we already knew, and the other part came from the surprises we found around the next street corner.

I'll post a summary of each day of our trip, with pictures and videos to illustrate.