This morning April was feeling somewhat worse with her cold and Bill made her sleep a while past the alarm. We had breakfast at home and then took the metro to near to the Picasso Museum in the Marais District (used to be a swamp slum, now it's hip and trendy). After sending a tourist in the wrong direction to the Picasso Museum, we followed and ran into the man coming back because it was actually in the opposite direction. We eventually found it.
The Picasso Museum has an astounding number of Picasso's paintings and his very interesting mixed media sculptures, as well as his own collection of art of his contemporary artists that he collected over his life. It was perhaps more fascinating to see the collection of this art of others after seeing Picasso's art and see how the artists influenced each other's work and the evolution of their styles. Picasso's own evolution from classical style to cubist style was startling. We enjoyed even seeing a cubist cat with a dead bird hanging from his mouth. Yes, even cats weren't spared Picasso's searing gaze.
We found lunch in the Marais at Page 35 Restaurant, run by an eccentric man who exuded the mannerisms that cinema has taught us to expect in French restaurateurs. We both had the set menu of a savory crepe, salad, dessert, and drink (14.50 Euros). It was a good meal though the crepes weren't as spectacular as the ones we had the night before. However, after the cruise this lunch was luxury.
We walked through the Marais and into the Bastille District (where the famous prison used to stand- now this is a monument in a traffic roundabout). We looked in a Depot-Vente (consignment store), that descended two levels into the deep basement below and packed full of second hand French clothing and accessories. We left empty handed and walked to McDonald's to get a cool drink and go to the washroom before walking up to Pere Lachaise Cemetery.
April had really wanted to go to Pere Lachaise Cemetery, famous for its notorious permanent residents, but did not think that we would be in the area (it is rather on the outskirts of the main part of Paris). When we saw we were near to it, we leapt at the opportunity to go.
We sat down in the shade of a tree on steps in the cemetery and had the half a baguette that we brought with us from breakfast with the drink from McDonald's. We walked around the graveyard and made a particular effort to find Oscar Wilde's grave as we both enjoy his witty writing. The graveyard has a note asking people to stop marking up his grave because his family has to pay to have it cleaned and they have gone so far as to erect a plastic barrier around it to prevent people from kissing his grave with bright red lipstick which had apparently become the tradition. Even despite this, people had climbed on a neighbouring grave to get over the barrier and kissed his grave with red lipstick. His grave is in a sort of Egyptian style, very grand. Instead of kissing his grave, we kissed each other in front of it and went on our way.
We took the metro home with sore feet. We looked at the cafe by our place, but didn't like the menu and found a sort of neighbourhood street fair happening at the park in front of our place, so we went to food carts and Bill had a hot dog on baguette, which he quite enjoyed, we had some fries which were okay, and April tried a waffle with Nutella, which tasted suspiciously like a doughnut.
We went for an early night's sleep after walking 9.99 km.
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| Picasso's cat |
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| Bastille |
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| Pere Lachaise Cemetery |
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| Oscar Wilde's grave |
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| Kiss someone else, not Oscar Wilde's grave |
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