Sunday 17/7/2016.
Today was to be another day of the dead. First on the agenda: Père Lachaise Cemetery. The three of us headed out on the metro, which thankfully, stopped right outside. We walked across the road and got a map of the cemetery. Père Lachaise Cemetery is big that you’d spend hours trying to find a specific grave without one. We marked off the ones we wanted to see: Oscar Wilde was top of our list, along with Jim Morrison, and some people who either haunted the cemetery, or we’d seen their graves in our book about haunted places in France. Neen wanted to see the author Gertrude Stein’s grave. And then we saw a name that we just had to visit – Sex Toy.
Horror Show
We wandered the beautiful cemetery, taking photos and making our way to the closest grave on our list – Etienne Gaspard Robertson. He was a magician who liked to terrify people. He invented the phantasmagoria, using lantern slides to create horror shows. His grave had featured in our book and had an incredible carving of the living on one side, the dead on the other side, and a flying skeleton between them playing a trumpet. Perhaps he was playing Green Day’s ‘Ha Ha You’re Dead.’ We stopped by a tree and consulted our map, certain we were in the right area. We turned around. It was right beside us.
The carving was fantastic. He also had skulls on the top of his monument. His grave would definitely be an inspiration for our tomb. Then Neen reminded us we have to pay for our own funeral. A ditch by the roadside it is then. A French couple asked us where Chopin’s grave was, so we directed them. Clearly we look like we know our way around the cemetery. Or maybe they spotted our map.
We made our way to Jim Morrison’s grave. There were quite a few people around his, but we managed to squeeze in and take some photos. There are railings around the whole section he’s in to stop people going to his grave, which is non-descript and disappointing.
The next grave on our list belonged to a Russian princess, Marie Elizabeth Demidoff, who apparently stated in her will that she would leave part of her inheritance to anyone who spent a year beside her corpse. Her monument was impressive, with columns and wolves’ heads. We stood at the bottom, trying to figure how to get up to the other side of her grave, and if the reward was still valid. After walking all the way around it and up, we discovered that had we gone the other way, a flight of steps would have taken us right to it. We were not shining today.
Mission: Sex Toy
Sex Toy’s grave was off the path, so we had to explore amongst other graves. After fifteen minutes of failing to find it, we realised we were in the wrong area. We crossed a path to another section and continued the hunt. Cat slipped and her hand landed on some brambles. We hunted for another fifteen minutes then Lynx stopped to change her camera battery. She happened to stop right by Sex Toy’s grave. Neen had walked right past it.
We were expecting something phallic shaped, or with chains. Nope. A simple plain slab with Sex Toy written on it in Old English font. No dates, no information, no moving eulogy. So like men who can’t find the g spot, we were poking around trying to look like we knew what we were doing, only to find it rather anti climatic. Many years later, we learned that Sex Toy was a famous French lesbian DJ. We’d put off Googling it, fearing the results that would appear with “sex toy in Père Lachaise cemetery.”
Kiss From a Rose
We stopped for a picnic on a bench before finding Oscar Wilde’s grave with no difficultly. He wrote one of our favourite poems – the Ballard of Reading Gaol, and the only book of his we’ve read – The Picture of Dorian Gray. We expected his grave to be crowded like Jim Morrisons’ was, but there were two only guys there. His grave was surrounded by glass because there was a tradition of people kissing his gravestone and leaving lipstick marks all over it, inspired by a line in one of his plays, A Woman of No Importance, where Lord Illingworth says, “what harm is there in a kiss?” to which Mrs Arbuthnot replies, “a kiss may ruin a human’s life.” Agreed. Once Herpes enters your system, there’s no getting rid of it.
The oils in the lipstick were damaging the stone, so the council cleaned them all off and erected a glass barrier to protect it. People now leave lipstick marks on the glass barrier instead. We did not participate in the tradition. Getting herpes in a graveyard would really sour our holiday and our reputation.
Wall of Death
We made our way to the eastern wall, where 140 communards were shot at dawn on 28th May after fighting their way across the cemetery. They were buried where they fell but apparently, visitors have seen their ghosts. We didn’t see them, but it was hot and sunny, so not in keeping with spectral apparitions. There were some incredible monuments to the victims of the holocaust and those that died in the resistance. They showed skeletal figures, reminding people of the horror they suffered. We much preferred them to regular plaques.
We found Gertrude Stein’s grave easily. She was a lesbian American novelist, playwright, poet and art collector. We saw her plaque in San Francisco’s Castro area on the Rainbow Walk of Honour, and now we’ve seen her grave. We also saw Edith Piaf’s grave, as it was near the exit. A French woman asked us where Oscar Wilde’s grave was, so we directed her then gave her our map. Maybe people saw our stylish outfits and presumed we were French cemetery workers.
Unseen University
We stopped at a café across the road to rest our painful feet before limping our way to the metro stop to go to the Musee Fragonard. After leaving the metro and walking down the really long Avenue de General De Galle, we couldn’t find the museum so went into a shop to buy a drink and ask where it was. The cashier didn’t know. They didn’t have any squash so we bought a big bottle of Volvic lemon flavoured water. It was vile. Is squash just a UK thing? We kept going until Neen checked the number. It was back near the metro stop. We turned around and hobbled back down the Avenue, only to find a solicitor’s at number 7. Neen got out her map. We were at the wrong end of the street. We got back on the metro and went another couple of stops.
The museum is inside a university and was worth a visit. We did the audio guide but there was so much information that we didn’t have time to listen to it all. There weren’t as many flayed people as we were hoping – it was mostly animal skeletons and organs, but it was still fascinating. And we learned that cows don’t actually have four stomachs, their stomachs are divided into 4 parts.
River of Dreams
We got back on the metro to meet Neen’s friends at the Eiffel Tower. For some reason, we expected it to be silver, not brown. Maybe because the little model of it we bought was silver. We got pictures as we walked past it then had to walk a long way to find the café Neen’s friends were in. A helpful American translated to the waiter what we meant by vegan. He was horrified at the thought of the UK cooking their chips in with the meat. So are we, monsieur, so are we. But he was impressed by our attempts to speak French and pointed us out to an American family we were sat beside, who refused to try. We’ve never been used as good examples before, only as portents of warning.
The queue for the Eiffel Tower was still long, so we did a sunset cruise along the river Seine. It was the best time to do it. It was beautiful as the sun went down and the lights came on. There was an annoying couple by us at the back of the boat. All she did was take constant selfies. This was years before “influencers” began ruining social media. We were glad when they left because we were tempted to push her in. Your face is not as interesting as the river we’re on.
Tower of Paris
It was getting dark by the time we returned to the Eiffel tower, so it was lit up red, white and blue. It looked beautiful, so we video called our mum and sister so they could see it. Neen’s friends didn’t come up because one had promised her wife she’d do the Eiffel Tower with her. We weren’t entirely sure why they’d wanted to come on this trip with us, as they refused to visit any of the famous landmarks and spent their time in shops or cafés.
Before we went up, security checked our bags and confiscated the large bottle of Volvic. Think they were concerned we would use people on the ground as target practice. As if we would! It was dark, our aim would be atrocious. The advantage of going up at 11 p.m. is that you don’t have long to wait. The disadvantage is that the top is closed. We got the lift to the second floor then video called our family from there.
Viewpoint
It was so beautiful up there that it didn’t matter that we didn’t make it to the top. We hate heights anyway. Lynx and Neen did a fake proposal photo there, only for people to applaud, because they thought it was genuine. We didn’t have the heart to tell them we were mocking the cliché of people doing this. It was made worse as moments later, a man proposed to his girlfriend for real, right behind us, to the crowd’s delight. Because proposing at Paris’s best known suicide spot is a great start to a long and healthy marriage. Or maybe they just wanted to rain on Neen and Lynx’s parade. Find your own proposal spot! This one’s taken.
We decided to get the full experience by walking down to the first floor. Big mistake. There were so many steps that by the time we got down, our feet were in agony. We queued to take the lift down but had to wait ages. It was gone midnight by the time we got down, but there was a sorbet place open, so we got strawberry and raspberry. It was the best sorbet we’d ever had. We had to walk ages to the metro. Neen’s friends were way ahead of us, but the three of us were in so much pain that we didn’t bother trying to keep up. We got to bed about 2 a.m.
Read Day 3.
Read Day 5.